Revelations - Sharks
by performativezippers
Summary: Maggie's parents aren't soulmates. She doesn't know that when she's younger, but it explains everything when she learns it. (aka the Maggie companion piece to Revelations)
1. Revelations 1-4

_**Hello and Welcome, dear friends to "Revelations - Sharks" which is the Maggie-centric work in the Revelations universe!**_

 _ **This is the companion piece to already-published "Revelations," which tells this story from Alex's point of view. I very strongly recommend reading that one first. "Revelations" is what sets up this entire universe - this fic doesn't rehash most of the constants of the world, so you'll likely be confused if you don't read that first.**_

 _ **Thank you so much for being here! Please let me know what you think of this story. And remember our bargain - y'all wanted this story, so y'all promised me comments up the wazoo!**_

* * *

Maggie's parents aren't soulmates.

She doesn't know that when she's younger, but it explains everything when she learns it.

It explains why they never talk about Revelations in her house – not before she had her first, and not after. It explains why everything she knows about soulmates and what is going to happen on her fifth birthday comes from kindergarten playground gossip and from tv shows.

Two days before her fifth birthday – before her first Revelation – Maggie's friend Cassie reminds her to take pictures of her arm and put them in her Revelations journal to keep them safe. Maggie tells her that she doesn't have a Revelations journal.

The next day – the day before her birthday – Cassie's mom gives her a Revelations journal at pickup.

Maggie realizes later that Cassie's mom thought they just couldn't afford a journal, not that her parents actively didn't want her to have one.

So when Maggie wakes up on her fifth birthday, she kind of knows what she's going to find. Animals on her arms. She knows one arm will be about her and the other arm will be about her soulmate, but she doesn't remember which will be which.

It's still very early, the digital clock next to her head starts with a 3, and it's still dark, and she can still hear the crickets outside her window. But she pulls her flashlight from under her bed and silently drags the covers over her head and turns on the light, huddled in her little cave, careful not to wake her brother.

On her right arm, from wrist to armpit, are drawings of sharks. Intricate and detailed and designed. Maggie has never seen anything so pretty in her entire life.

And Maggie loves sharks – she has four books about sharks on her bookshelf right this minute, and Ms. Dana her kindergarten teacher said she would give Maggie another one for her birthday – so she figures out this arm must be the one that's about her.

So she looks to her left arm, which she remembers is her left because it's the arm she doesn't throw with so good, and she sees a snake. A big, thick, strong snake coiling around her arm.

There are snakes sometimes in the cornfields, and they really scare Maggie. Some of them are poison, and their neighbor's dog got bit by one and he died, and they didn't have a funeral but they buried him in their backyard and sometimes when she's playing outside by herself Maggie brings a flower and lays it on his grave.

But Maggie's learned at school that her soulmate is a wonderful person that she's supposed to love, and Maggie guesses that maybe she should trust her soulmate and not be so scared of snakes anymore.

She promises herself, solemn and silent and serious, huddled under her covers in the dead of night, just hours after turning five, that she'll try.

* * *

Later that day, at drop-off, it's Cassie's mom who takes pictures of her arms, covered in her marks, after Maggie's own mom has driven away. She gives the prints to Maggie a week later, after they're developed. Maggie tucks them in her journal and hides the whole thing under her bed.

(When she's older and her parents kick her out, Cassie's mom is the first person Maggie calls. She tells Maggie that she's sorry for what's happened to her, but she can't support that kind of lifestyle in her house. She wishes Maggie the best of luck and hangs up on her.

Maggie's aunt is her second call.)

* * *

When Maggie is seven, she learns that her soulmate has a name that starts with A. There are five kids in Maggie's class with names that start with A. Maggie's own brother starts with A. That must mean there are like a billion people with A names in the world.

Sarah P came to school a couple weeks ago on her birthday with a drawing on her arm, not a letter. Ms. Morris looked it up and said it was a Korean letter, but it looked like a beautiful box with squiggles to Maggie. Ms. Morris told Sarah P that her soulmate probably lived in Korea, and they all looked at a map of the world, and Korea is really, _really_ far from Nebraska.

Maggie had been hoping her soulmate might live in Korea too. She tries not to be disappointed when she sees the regular old A, but it's hard.

* * *

Maggie's soulmate lives in the US, she learns when she's nine, on the west coast or in Alaska or Hawaii. Maggie hopes for Hawaii, because she's only nine but she's kind of sick of the winter. Alaska would be cool too though – Maggie's always wanted to ride on a dog sled.

Lots of the other kids in her class have soulmates who also live in the Midwest. Suddenly people start caring about who around them has their same letter. Even though hers isn't in Nebraska, Maggie avoids every boy she meets who has a name that starts with A.

She doesn't know why, but she really isn't excited to meet the boy who is her soulmate. The idea makes her feel kind of sick inside.

* * *

When she's ten, Maggie learns that her parents aren't soulmates. Her oldest brother, Tomás, mentions it casually at breakfast one morning, like it isn't a big deal.

He's newly 16, and his soulbond is open, but he's telling Maggie and their middle brother Antonio that he doesn't care.

"Why waste time wondering about something that doesn't matter," he's saying as he shovels cereal in his mouth. "Pop didn't spend his time worrying about it, that's for sure, and look at him. We had the biggest yield last year of anyone in Blue Springs."

Maggie is only ten, but she knows that can't be all that impressive. There are only 321 other people who live in Blue Springs, and that includes babies.

Antonio's spoon is hovering over his own cereal. "What do you mean, Pop didn't worry about it?"

Tomás looks at him like he's an idiot. Tomás loves to look at both of them like that, like even though they're only ten and twelve, they're the biggest idiots in the universe. "I mean what I said, Tony, you dimwit."

"Don't call him that," Maggie says softly. Tonio has a lot of trouble in school because he can't read well, but it's not his fault that the letters keep wiggling around when he looks at them, and he isn't stupid, and it isn't fair for Tomás to call him dimwit all the time.

But Tomás ignores her, as always. "Did you dipshits really think Pop and Ma were soulmates?" He scoffs at them. "No one in this fucking town are soulmates. You'll never meet yours, so you might as well stop thinking about it now. It doesn't matter."

He takes another huge bite of cereal and Maggie watches the milk drip down his chin, hitting his shirt and making a wet circle that expands and expands and expands.

* * *

Maggie learns when she's eleven that her soulmate likes to read and surf and do something with science.

Maggie hopes the surfing means she's right about Hawaii.

Maggie's not surprised by what's on her own arm. She loves softball, and she's really good at it. And she's good in school – even though he's two grades ahead of her she helps Tonio a lot because he has trouble, so she's gotten really good at reading. And soccer isn't as fun as softball but all the other girls play it, and Maggie wants to do what they do, so she keeps playing.

She's always kind of liked science, but she's never thought about it much.

She decides to enroll in honors science when she gets to the upper school for seventh grade. If her soulmate likes it, it must be kind of cool.

* * *

Maggie has always known that she's a little different from the other kids. She looks different – her skin is a little darker and her hair is black and her eyes are dark, and most of the other kids are pale and blonde or have light brown hair and lots of them have blue or green eyes.

She knows that her parents talk differently, and that they speak Spanish sometimes at home, and she's never heard any of her friends' parents speaking Spanish.

And she knows at home they're Tomás and Antonio and Magdalena, but at school they're Tommy and Tony and Maggie.

She doesn't really realize she's not white, though, doesn't realize there are words for the kind of different she is, until she's in seventh grade, her first year in the upper school, and someone beats up Tonio for the first time. Maggie finds him, huddled against a wall, hiding behind the school. His skinny frame shaking with fear and pain. The white wall he's against is splattered with blood.

He tells her, his voice shaking, what they called him, what they said to him.

Maggie is furious. She walks him home and cleans him up before their parents can come home and see him.

She tells Tomás what happened, even though Tonio tells her not to. Tomás sets his jaw and says he'll handle it. He's 17 now, a senior, and he's on the football team. He's huge and strong and popular and all the girls like him, and Maggie is sure he can take care of it.

He does. He beats the crap out of the kid who did it, tells him never to mess with Tony or Maggie ever again.

But after Tomás graduates – even though he still lives in town, at home, and works in the fields with their dad – the kid retaliates.

He and his friends come for Tonio again and again, and then, when they're sick of Maggie intervening and screaming at them, they come for her too. They don't hit her as hard but she bleeds.

She goes to the principal, defiant.

He's the authority figure. He's supposed to help.

He suspends her one day for fighting. He suspends the boys one day for fighting. He tells Maggie to stop causing trouble.

Maggie goes home in a rage, and her father won't look at her and Tonio won't look at her.

It's Tomás who comes to her room, the little cubby she has to herself now that she and Tonio are old enough that they can't share a room anymore because she's a girl. Maggie rages at him that she and the boys got the same punishment, and Tomás just shrugs.

"They're white," he says, like it's that simple.

And, it turns out, it is.

They're white. The principal is white. The whole fucking town is white.

And Maggie isn't.


	2. Revelations 5-7

Ever since she can remember, Maggie's thought about her soulmate in two totally different ways. In one way, she loves her soulmate. She stopped being scared (mostly) of snakes for her soulmate, she's the best in her grade in science because of her soulmate. She likes thinking about her soulmate surfing alongside dolphins and turtles in Hawaii, before plopping down in the sand and reading a novel. When she thinks about her soulmate, it's not really a person or a clear figure. It's an idea, but there's no body or face really attached to it.

But in another way, she hates thinking about her soulmate. It makes her skin crawl to think about any of the boys she knows being her soulmate. Thinking about getting married, being someone's wife, sharing a house and bed with a boy, and kissing him and having sex with him…no. Just, no.

And her parents aren't soulmates and Tomás said to stop thinking about her soulmate, and so she never looks around at the boys and wonders what it would be like for any of them to be her soulmate. Her parents never say the word, so they don't joke about every boy who starts with A like Cassie's mom does.

Maggie both desperately cares, and also hopes to never think about it again.

She doesn't understand why until a couple months after her thirteenth birthday.

Her fifth Revelation is greatest fear. And she wakes up in the morning and she's totally confused. Her right arm says "girls," and she doesn't get it. Girls? Since when is she afraid of _girls_? Snakes, sure (she's _trying_ , but they don't have _legs_ ). Heights, yes. Those boys who clearly still want to pummel her, definitely.

But girls?

She likes girls. She loves girls. All her friends are girls. She doesn't ever even look at boys or think about boys, so how on earth could she be afraid of girls?

Her left arm says "failure," and at least that one makes sense. Maggie's competitive; she likes to win, she likes to succeed, she likes to be the fastest and the smartest and the best at everything. So, yeah, failure is a good fear.

Girls, though, doesn't make any sense.

But then, a couple of months later, she's sitting at lunch with her friends. They're almost done with eighth grade now, and people are going on dates. Usually in a big group – a group of boys and a group of girls and one of each are "on a date" and just sit next to each other – but still. They're dating.

Maggie has no interest in dating.

Trysta is asking Cassie, who has already gone on three dates with three different boys, which is the most of any girl in their class so she's basically a dating expert, how you know when you have a crush on a boy.

"It's simple," Cassie tells her. "Think about the boy, and picture yourself holding hands with him. If that feels nice, you have a crush on him. If it doesn't, you just like him as a friend."

The very idea of holding hands with any boy she's ever met gives Maggie the willies.

She turns that sentence over and over in her head for days. Something just isn't fitting, and she can't figure out what it is.

And then, that summer, a new girl moves into town and joins the summer soccer league Maggie plays in. Her name is Eliza Wilke, and she has long blonde hair with the tips dyed pink and she wears a lot of eyeliner and halfway through the summer she goes to Lincoln with her cousin and gets her nose pierced. And she's tall and glamorous, but that doesn't seem to matter to her.

Instead of all the other tall white girls with blonde hair, she picks Maggie to be her best friend on the team. And they start hanging out after soccer, and they take over Eliza's basement as their primary spot because it's fucking hot in Blue Springs and the basement is always nice and cool.

And Maggie feels something swoop in her stomach when they're alone together and she can smell Eliza's shampoo, or when she says something that makes Eliza laugh, or when Eliza puts her arm around Maggie's shoulders and calls Maggie her best friend.

And one night, when she's walking home from Eliza's house, and the sun is just setting, Cassie's words pop into Maggie's mind. And she's completely dumbfounded as she realizes.

She wants to hold Eliza's hand. She thinks about herself holding Eliza's hand – even, maybe kissing Eliza – and it's the best thing she's ever imagined.

Which, if Cassie's right, means that she _likes_ Eliza. That she has a crush on Eliza.

A girl.

Maggie's heard all the words for girls who like other girls, especially the bad ones. She's never thought of herself that way.

But, she's never had a crush on a boy.

And she definitely has a crush on Eliza, who is definitely a girl.

Everything slots into place, and it terrifies her. Deep into the very core of who she is, it terrifies her.

She remembers her Revelation, that word that showed up on her skin almost six months ago.

She thinks about her soulmate, and forces herself to picture a boy. She hates it.

She lets herself, for the very first time, picture a girl. A girl who surfs and reads on the beach in a bikini, long hair dripping down her back, her tan skin glowing in the sunshine, her smile glinting white as she beckons for Maggie to join her on her towel.

And Maggie walks past her house and into the cornfield and she isn't afraid of snakes or heights or bullies. Just her own stupid, backwards, fucked up, totally gay heart.

* * *

They all start ninth grade, and a lot of boys notice Eliza and have crushes on Eliza because she's tall and gorgeous and looks like a model and she's new and they haven't known her since preschool.

But Eliza doesn't give any of them the time of day. She just spends time with Maggie.

They fashion themselves rebels. They make plans for the stick-and-poke tattoos they're going to give each other. They go to Lincoln with Eliza's cousin and spend all of their money at Hot Topic. Eliza steals a pack of cigarettes from her mom and they smoke them down in the basement, and sometimes they sneak cans of beer from the fridge and they sip them, acting drunk and giggling to each other at how desperately bad they are.

They pride themselves on watching horror movies while all the other girls in their class are watching romantic comedies.

Their class is so small that they're still friends with the other girls. But everyone knows that Maggie and Eliza are special, that they're a unit. Maggie loves it. It gives her a little thrill every time someone calls them best friends or says "MaggieandEliza" like they're one person.

And Maggie isn't positive, because they've never talked about it, but she's pretty sure Eliza might like her back, might want to hold her hand and kiss her too. Because Eliza never even looks at the boys, and she spends all her time with Maggie, and sometimes they cuddle while they watch the movies, and they have a lot of sleepovers.

And this is the first year they're old enough to go to the big dance in March, and everyone is going, and everyone is going with a date. And Maggie doesn't want to go with anyone but Eliza, and she doesn't want Eliza to go with anyone but her.

Maggie likes her so much. She knows Eliza isn't her soulmate, obviously, she's from Oklahoma and her name starts with E, but Maggie can't imagine ever liking anyone as much as she likes Eliza.

She's nervous when she puts the little yellow card in Eliza's locker on Valentine's Day, the note confessing her feelings and asking her to the dance. She's nervous enough that she asked her in a note, instead of in person. She feels very small that day, waiting for an answer. She's nervous Eliza will say no.

And, later, she feels like an idiot, but at the time she doesn't really think about it being a gay statement to go to the dance together. They already do everything together, they're always together. They're MaggieandEliza. It just feels like defense – they can't go with anyone else because they're going with each other. And yes, maybe in Maggie's fantasies they hold hands and slow dance and kiss, but it just never really clicks for her that this isn't just about her and Eliza. That it's about the whole school, the whole town.

She wonders later, if she'd really understood what she'd been doing – if she'd understood that she was asking both of them to out themselves, to openly tell everyone they're gay, by walking hand in hand to the dance where everyone was expected to kiss – if she'd have done it at all.

But she doesn't really think about it like that.

So she's blindsided.

She puts the note in Eliza's locker during morning break, and she doesn't see her at lunch, which is weird because they always eat lunch together. And they have afternoon classes together, but they don't get the chance to talk because Eliza walks in and out of them in a group of other girls. And after school Maggie has softball practice and Eliza doesn't play softball. So Maggie goes home after practice to change her clothes, planning to call Eliza from her house.

But she gets home and her parents are sitting in the living room, waiting for her.

She drops her bag at the front door, cocking her head in confusion.

She starts to ask what's going on, and then she sees it.

Her note, in the sweet little yellow envelope she'd agonized over at the store, clutched in her father's hand.

He doesn't even give her time to pack.

Her mom doesn't say a word.

* * *

Maggie has never felt pain like this. Sadness and anger and fear, she's felt those before. But she's never hated like this before. Never hated anyone else like this. Never hated herself like this. She's never felt despair like this, not even close – never felt it threaten to crush her in an instant. She's shattered. It's a screaming in her ears, it's a disembowelment, an evisceration. She's on fire from the inside, she's drowning. The words ring in her ears, harsh and jagged and cruel, and they don't stop.

* * *

Tonio packs a bag for her and brings it over to their tía's house a few days later. He found her Revelations journal under her bed, and he made sure to wrap it in a couple tshirts so it didn't get messed up. He remembered to bring her softball bag and her soccer bag too, but he forgot all of her underwear.

She has to wear her tía's old pairs until she can save up enough money to buy her own.

Eliza never speaks to her again, not one word. Ever. She goes to the dance with Justin Beam.

Her parents don't speak to her. Tomás doesn't speak to her. Tonio says hi at school, but he drops out later that year. He's flunking nearly all of his classes but he's started working at the tire shop down the road and the owner says he'll hire him on full time without a diploma, so he takes the job.

And Maggie is alone.

* * *

She wishes she could opt out of the sixth Revelation. She doesn't want to know.

She considers wearing long sleeves and just never checking what's under them.

She's been living with her tía for almost a year. She's settled into a routine. Her tía doesn't have much money, much less than her parents, so Maggie tries to take up as little space and as little money as she can. She sleeps on the fold-out couch in the living room, and she's careful to have put it back into couch form before her tía wakes up every morning. Maggie works two jobs now to be able to afford her own groceries, so her tía doesn't have to feed her. She does her homework in the library during lunch and after school so she doesn't take up space in the apartment.

She'd tried to stay on the softball team so she could get a scholarship to college, but the other girls wouldn't treat her like a teammate. They wouldn't let her into the locker room while they were changing, they wouldn't partner with her for drills. She got hit with a lot of pitches and dirty slides in practice.

Her coach had finally pulled her aside and told her that she wasn't a good fit for the culture of the team.

Maggie had sold her gear and used the money to buy an SAT prep book.

Now she studies from it every night after her tía goes to bed. She has to earn her scholarship another way.

So she considers not looking at her arms, because what good could possibly come of it?

But she's a curious person, and she can't really leave a mystery unsolved, so she looks.

The sixth Revelation is what the three people closest to you think of you.

Her word is "abomination." She'd been expecting "dyke." This is worse.

Her feelings bubble up, but she shoves them back down, deeper and further than ever before.

She scares herself with how good at that she is, now.

Her soulmate's word is "brilliant."

Maggie tries to be happy for her, to be happy that the people around her see her and appreciate her. She tries to be happy that she's matched with someone so smart. She tries to be proud of her, instead of jealous of her.

She tries not to worry that her soulmate won't want to meet her.

She tries not to worry that her soulmate will believe it. That this girl will really believe that she's matched with an abomination.

That she'll hate her, too. Just like everyone does.

It doesn't work.

* * *

Her soulbond opens when she's sixteen, like everybody's.

She doesn't feel much at first, which is apparently normal. It takes time for it to solidify, for things to start Resonating regularly.

She feels worry, sometimes. Over the summer she feels a terrible pain in her head, and then a suffocating feeling like her lungs are filling up with water. The terrible pain her head fades after a couple hours, but it throbs for days.

It's weird, knowing that it's happening to someone else. Her soulmate has always been this kind of abstract concept before now – a person she knew existed but was sort of just an idea.

And now it's a real person, with a body, and a brain, and feelings, and she was just smashed in the head with something, and Maggie wonders if she was surfing and nearly drowned.

It makes her real in ways she never was before.

And Maggie's family was, it turns out, wrong about fucking everything in the world, so Maggie tries to shuck off the shame she's always felt for caring about her soulmate.

If her dad never cared about his soulmate, Maggie will care about hers more than anything, even if she is nothing more than an abomination.

If Blue Springs never expected her to find _him_ , she's gonna find _her_.

* * *

Her final Revelation comes right after she's turned in all her college applications, but before she gets any decisions back. She has just one more semester of high school to go before she's free of this terrible place forever, and she can't wait. She has enough saved up for a bus ticket to anywhere in the country, and it's taking all of her discipline to wait until graduation before she shakes the dust from this godforsaken place from her shoes.

On her seventeenth birthday, like every day, she wakes up at 5:30am. She makes her bed, careful to fold the sheet and blanket flat so it'll collapse into a couch on the first try. She puts on her work uniform in the dark, careful not to wake her tía. She leaves the apartment and jogs to the grocery store, clocking in at 5:55 for the first half of her split shift. She works in the back, restocking the dairy fridge and taking inventory (the only jobs where customers can't see her and make a fuss about her contaminating their groceries with her lifestyle) until 8:30, when she hangs up her apron, clocks out, and trots to school, sliding into her seat just as the tardy bell rings.

It isn't until her free period after lunch that she remembers that today is her birthday.

She's the only person in the library, so she has privacy to slowly roll up her sleeves and look at her final Revelation. Her right arm says "to be loved."

Well, yes. Clearly.

Her left arm says "to be relieved." It takes her a while, but she gets it. Her soulmate has been Resonating a lot of stress lately, she must want a break.

Maggie hopes she's okay.

The librarian comes over, and she's a sweet older woman, and she's always been nice to Maggie. And Maggie is too slow pushing her sleeves down, and the librarian sees.

"Happy birthday, Maggie," she says softly.

"Thank you." They're the first words Maggie's spoken all day.

The librarian walks away and then comes back with an old polaroid camera.

"Take as many pictures as you want, sweetheart," she says, her voice a little thick. "I know you probably don't have any."


	3. Resonance

Maggie's read that once your soulbond is open, you'll feel it if one of their close family members dies. She's read that you'll feel two things – one is the obvious emotional agony they'll Resonate to you, but the other is different. She's read that it'll feel like one of your limbs is numb or hollow or just plain gone, for a couple of days.

And she doesn't feel that – her arms or legs don't go numb. But the pain that she feels, the grief – there's no other explanation for it. She's still seventeen, and someone must be dead.

The grief is constant – it comes not in waves but in cuts, like she's constantly being sliced apart by it. It's accompanied by frustration and guilt and anger and stress and fear.

She wonders if they've both lost their parents, now.

* * *

Maggie gets into every college she applies to, and Tonio finally got her parents to sign the emancipation documents, so she's offered a full scholarship to most of them. She picks the University of Tampa because it's always warm there, and they have a good softball team, and they included room and board for the summers in her scholarship, and they have a group for gay students, and they have other brown kids who go there, and it's really far from Nebraska.

She packs everything she owns in her two bags, hugs her tía goodbye, and walks to the tire store. Tonio drives her to Lincoln to catch her bus.

They pass the sign that they're leaving Blue Springs, and Tonio doesn't mention that Maggie starts to cry.

* * *

The University of Tampa could not be more different from Blue Springs if it tried. The campus is right in the middle of the city, and it's beautiful and everything looks new, and it's hot and sunny all of the time, and there are other brown people, and there are other gay people.

Maggie's roommate is named Jenna, and she's from Ohio, and they bond over how glad they are to skip the snow for four years. And Maggie can tell that Jenna isn't a forever friend – probably not someone Maggie will reminisce about twenty years from now, but she's a good roommate, and she's really nice, and she's the first friend Maggie's had in years.

And when Maggie brings Jenna a coffee and a donut when she's studying for her first big French test in the library, Jenna stands up and hugs her, and it's the first time a friend has touched or hugged her since February 14th when she was fourteen years old.

Maggie goes back to their room and cries, just a little.

* * *

She gears herself up, and she walks into the first Pride meeting of the year. She's terrified. She can't believe she's about to voluntarily out herself to another campus, to another community. But she tells herself over and over again that she picked this school because no one cares if you're gay here, and that she's never been a coward, and that she didn't work three jobs and give up everything she'd ever loved to hide herself away for all of college. She owes it to herself to try to be happy.

So she walks in the room, and no one screams or kicks her out or gets upset. They hand her a slice of pizza and ask her to make a nametag, and they tell her they're happy that she came.

It takes two months, but she finally tells Jenna the truth when she asks where Maggie goes every Wednesday night. And she's afraid, because this dorm room is her only home, and it's the first bed she's slept in that wasn't really a couch since she was fourteen. But she summons her courage, and she tells her she's been going to the Pride meetings.

And Jenna just grins at her. "Oh!" she says, "I didn't realize you were gay! That's cool!"

And Maggie just blinks, a couple of times.

* * *

She meets Steph at Pride. Steph's a junior, and she's beautiful. She's Persian, and they connect over not being white enough but not being black enough. And they hang out three times before Maggie realizes that they're dating.

It isn't until Steph leans in, grabbing a fistful of Maggie's shirt, and tells Maggie to finally fucking kiss her, that Maggie understands what's happening. And she can't possibly believe it, because Steph is gorgeous and older and popular and wonderful and Maggie is small and homeless. But she kind of has to believe it because she can feel Steph's breath on her lips and their hips are pressed together and Steph is holding onto her shirt and their noses are brushing together.

So Maggie leans in too, and Steph kisses her.

It's fucking incredible.

And Maggie had known she was gay, that she liked girls in a way that was different, for years now. But there's something about kissing a girl for the first time, about touching a girl for the first time. About touching a girl who is touching her back, who wants to touch her back, in that way, that exceeds every daydream and every wish Maggie's ever had.

It doesn't take long before things progress, and they start having sex before Thanksgiving break.

Maggie has never, not once in her life, been so happy.

* * *

Steph leaves campus for winter break and isn't coming back, because she's studying abroad in India, and Maggie mopes around for the first part of winter break. She has special dispensation to stay on campus, but not many folks are there, so she's spending time alone for the first time since Blue Springs.

She starts going to the gym every day, trying to get the strength and flexibility back she lost when she had to quit sports. The softball coach finds her there one day, trying to bench-press without a spotter. She hurries over, takes the weights out of Maggie's hands, and starts a stern lecture before stopping, narrowing her eyes, and asking why Maggie's on campus two days before Christmas.

Maggie tells her, haltingly, that she doesn't have anywhere else to go.

So she spends Christmas Eve at Coach Randall's house, and she plays catch with the coach and her young sons, and the coach takes them all to the batting cages that afternoon, and she offers Maggie a place on the team on the spot.

And Maggie spends an 80 degree Christmas Eve next to a crackling fire with a little boy curled up in her lap, her muscles burning pleasantly, surrounded by people who aren't even a little bothered that she misses her ex-girlfriend.

* * *

In February, when Maggie is eighteen, her soulmate is distraught. She's frustrated and disappointed and a little bit empty. She Resonates loss pretty strongly for a couple of weeks.

Maggie wonders who else she's lost.

* * *

Maggie finds herself in a criminal justice class her freshmen spring, mostly because it works with her schedule and Jenna's going to take it and Jenna begs her to take it too. She surprises both of them by loving it. Her teacher talks openly and frequently about miscarriages of justice, about how black and brown people are unfairly targeted by the system. And Maggie's never heard a white person say that before – never heard anyone say that out loud except Tomás.

Maggie spends a lot of time in that professor's office, talking about the nuances of the readings and the law.

She invites Maggie to be a research assistant over the summer, and Maggie says yes immediately.

And the end of the summer, the professor suggests that Maggie not only consider majoring in criminal justice, but that she also look into criminal justice graduate programs, or maybe into becoming a detective or a public defender. "You've got a head for this," she tells Maggie, "and most people don't. I think you could be exceptional in this field."

And for the last four years Maggie's been trying to fit in, to not be noticed for anything, just to be regular. But she gets her thinking again, gets her competitive again.

She makes Maggie want to be noticed. To excel. To be exceptional.

She makes her want to make her soulmate proud of her. Makes her want to be known as something more than an abomination. Makes her want to be brilliant too, to be strong, to be worthy of the love she so desperately wants.

* * *

She meets Emily in her political science class the next fall. She's a sophomore too, and she blushes and looks away every time she looks at Maggie. After Steph had left, Maggie had hooked up with a couple of other girls, and casually dated a couple of other girls, so she knows what those looks mean now.

She manages to run into Emily at a Halloween party, and she flirts, and Emily blushes and blushes and blushes until she, completely unexpectedly, just jumps Maggie.

They make out for hours, and Maggie thinks this will probably be a short-term thing, maybe just tonight, maybe for a couple of weeks.

They date for nearly five years.

* * *

Her junior year, right after her birthday, just a couple weeks before winter break, Maggie feels her soulmate have sex for the first time. She doesn't know, of course, if it's really the first time, or just the first since the soulbond opened. But the bond has been open for Maggie for four years, so she's guessing this is the first time.

It feels weird.

It's pleasurable, certainly. It turns her on, but it also makes her sad and lonely in ways she didn't expect.

Her soulmate isn't Resonating ecstasy or joy or happiness either, which makes Maggie worry. She's just getting determination, with a side of disappointment.

She does it a couple more times in the next two weeks, and each time, Maggie feels disappointment, maybe disillusionment. Sadness. A little bit of self-loathing, too.

Maggie hopes she breaks the fuck up with whatever girl is making her feel so shitty about herself after sex. She doesn't really _want_ her soulmate to be having sex with anyone else, of course, but it's a totally normal thing to do (and, hell, Maggie's definitely doing it). But if her soulmate is going to be doing it with someone else – with anyone – she deserves to be treated like a goddess. To be revered, to be worshiped, to be made happy.

Maggie knows that Emily isn't her soulmate, obviously, but she always tries to make Emily feel loved, feel cared for, feel happy. Emily deserves that. Everyone deserves that.

Maggie hopes her soulmate knows that she deserves better. That better is waiting out there for her.

* * *

Her senior year, Maggie applies to law schools and police academies around the country, anywhere she could enjoy living. She's pretty sure she wants to go the detective route, not the defense attorney route. She wants to keep the streets and the jails safe, rather than clean up after dirty detectives who shouldn't have made the bad arrests in the first place.

But she's a lesbian and she's Latina and she's physically small, so the police academies aren't a guarantee.

Her top choice is National City's police department, out in California. California is liberal, and full of brown people and gay people, and it doesn't snow, and the NCPD is a great department. Maggie's talked to a woman detective there, a Latina woman, and she encouraged Maggie to apply.

Emily wants to be an architect, but she didn't get into a program for next year, so she said she'll move with Maggie wherever, and will reapply.

When Maggie gets the letter, she can't even believe it.

She got in.

National City Police Academy. Months of classes and tests and then, if you pass, a nearly six-month trial period before you officially graduate and join the force. It's one of the longest and hardest police academies in the country. But graduates from it have an insanely high promotion rate, and Maggie would be able to walk into any department across the US and get a job with that on her resume.

And she's competitive and she wants to be noticed and she wants to excel.

So after graduation Maggie and Emily say goodbye to all of their friends, most of whom are staying in Florida or on the east coast, and they move to California.

* * *

The Academy is hard, harder than Maggie could possibly have imagined. She comes home each day to their tiny shitty little apartment with aching muscles and a throbbing head. The other recruits are mostly jarheads, former jocks, some former military. A lot of them are bullies. They're mostly men and mostly white and all straight, and they think she's a joke.

Until she starts beating them in the written exams. And then she starts beating them in marksmanship and speed drills. And then she starts lifting more than she needs to for her height and weight.

And then she's suddenly the top of their class.

They don't think she's a joke then. Then they hate her.

And Emily is miserable. She's working as an assistant at a big architecture firm, and she's basically the office bitch, and architects work insane hours and she's expected to be there before they arrive and stay after they leave. And she comes from a wealthy family and they're living in a total shithole because it's all Maggie can afford half of, and Emily isn't adapting well to the lifestyle change.

They're basically roommates who only sometimes run into each other. When they're both awake and in the apartment, they're usually dealing with finances or bickering about something stupid, or sometimes really fighting, or sometimes having sex.

It's not the relationship Maggie wants, or what she's always imagined she would have. But Emily loves her, and she loves Emily, and everyone else in her life has walked out on her or just barely tolerated her, and Emily moved across the country just to be with her, and Emily loves her.

So Maggie just grits her teeth and forces herself to work even harder, to memorize faster, to shoot straighter, to lift heavier, so she can graduate at the top of her class and start her real life. With Emily.

She tries not to think too much about her soulmate. She barely has time to brush her teeth and go to the bathroom most days, so it's not like she has a lot of time for her thoughts to linger. But it feels shitty to be waiting for someone else when she's trying so hard to make things work at home with Emily.

Her soulmate has sex sometimes, and Maggie tries not to think too much about how sad and disappointed she always is afterwards.

They used to talk about it, at the beginning. About what they'd do if either of them met their soulmate. _Maybe polyamory_ , they'd suggested. _Who knows_ , they'd said, _but we'll be honest with each other. We'll make sure we do something that's right for everyone. We'll be good to each other_ , they'd said. _We love each other and that matters too_ , they'd said.

They haven't talked like that since junior year.

* * *

In December, when Maggie has just turned 22 and is about halfway through the long Academy process, her soulmate Resonates a burst of happiness and pride and satisfaction. Maggie wonders what she accomplished. She remembers the word brilliant, and she assumes it's something amazing.

She writes just one word in her journal. "Congratulations."

* * *

In April, when Maggie is 22, she graduates from the NCPD Academy at the very top of her class. When she gets her final scores and notice of her graduation, she feels like her heart is going to explode from the force of her joy and her pride.

Ever since she was fourteen, the entire world had told her that she wasn't right, that she wasn't good enough, that she didn't deserve the life she wanted. She couldn't have a family, she couldn't be on a team, she couldn't succeed, she shouldn't live. That she was perverse. An abomination.

And she had clawed, and fought, and survived.

And she'd gotten to this academy and had been surrounded same type of boy who'd beaten up her brother for being skinny and brown and dyslexic, who'd beaten her up for being brown and for existing, and then later for being gay. And she'd decimated them.

She had stepped over them and taken what she deserved.

She's joining NCPD as the rookie with the highest Academy graduation scores in a generation. She already has her eye on a shiny detective's badge.

Everyone looked at her and thought she couldn't.

But she did.

They tried to keep her down, but look how far she's risen.


	4. Emily

Maggie had thought that things would get better at home after she graduated and joined the force for real.

She feels completely blindsided when she looks up one day about six months later, in November when she's about to turn 23, and realizes that they're worse.

Emily got into architecture school, and the workload is seriously heavy. It's not at all like undergrad. The National City College of Architecture isn't one of the best programs in the country, so everyone in it is kind of cut-throat to prove that they're better than each other. Emily makes three good friends, and the four of them huddle together and try to create some semblance of a social life together.

Maggie doesn't like any of them.

She barely even meets them because she's working so many shifts and at such strange hours, but now any free time she _could_ spend with Emily, she has to spend with Emily and her friends.

It sucks.

Maggie's work schedule is another problem in their relationship. Emily's family has a lot of money, so her parents are supporting her while she's in school. That's amazing – Maggie's so happy for Em that she has that kind of love and support. Maggie's grateful that she'll graduate without debt, and that she doesn't have to worry about how to make rent while she's in school.

But now that Emily has disposable income again, she wants to do stuff. Not crazy stuff, but just the stuff she's always done, her whole life. Go out for a drink a couple times a week, go bowling, treat them to a nice sushi dinner, try out the new restaurant next to campus, go away for a weekend with her friends. And Maggie's never once been accustomed having spending money, but Emily's never really lived without it. And she was so miserable last year and Maggie wants to make that up to her. But taking her out to the places she likes, even when they split the checks 50/50, is more than Maggie can afford.

So she takes all the extra shifts she can to try to give Emily the life she wants.

And all the shifts end up keeping her away from Emily, and Emily's friends keep her away from Emily, and Maggie loves her job, and it's all kind of fucked.

And back in college, Maggie had been kind of a big deal. Star softball player, president of the Pride club, known for being smart and funny and a good time. She was known on campus – _college famous_ , her friends called her – and, she realizes in retrospect, Emily had basked in that glow. She'd liked being the girlfriend of one of the most popular people on campus. She liked being the one that Maggie came home to, she liked being shown off, being noticed when they walked into a room. She liked how Maggie's glow had made her glow, too. She liked when people would point her out and say, "that's _Maggie Sawyer's_ girlfriend."

Maggie had been a big fish in a very small pond, and now she's a tadpole in the ocean. And she's thriving from learning to navigate the new currents, but Emily is taking on water. Sinking.

* * *

It gets worse when Emily's parents come to visit from Connecticut just before Christmas. They're planning to spend a couple days in California before all going, all four of them, to a resort for the holiday.

They come to visit, and Maggie's met them before, but not since they moved to California. And Emily brings them into the apartment – the tiny, shitty, cramped, probably moldy apartment – and they completely freak out.

They insist, four times, that they move to a bigger apartment in a better building in a nicer neighborhood immediately. Maggie reminds them, four times, that she pays half the rent, and this is what she can afford.

They offer to pay her rent at a better place, casually, like it's nothing. Four times.

They want her to leave this apartment, but this apartment is the only place she's felt like she's _home_ since she was fourteen. Her dorm rooms were big and beautiful, but temporary. She'd been at the mercy of the University – if she'd slipped up and lost her scholarship, she'd have had to pack her things and move out, no questions asked.

And before that she'd slept on a couch for three and half years and kept all her clothes hidden and tucked away in bags in case she had to make another run for it.

This apartment is small and cramped and someone definitely died in it, but it's the only place that's hers. As long as she makes the rent, she can stay. No one can take it away from her. She'd fought and she'd struggled and she's made it. She's taking care of herself. She's independent, she's strong, she's a survivor. And this home is proof.

And Maggie will never rely on someone else for her housing, ever again. She will never be at someone else's mercy – never at a _parent's_ mercy – ever again.

She says no, firmly and insistently, four times.

After her parents leave for the night, Emily turns on Maggie, venting all of her anger and frustration and disappointment in this shitty post-grad life. And she has good reasons to be frustrated: she moved across the country to be with a partner she never sees, who seems to care more about the job than about her, and who won't let her live somewhere that doesn't smell like a locker room, because of her stupid pride.

It's the worst fight of their relationship. Emily leaves, slamming the door behind her, to spend the night in her parents' hotel room.

They go to the resort without Maggie.

She spends the holiday alone, picking up every single shift she can. She rings in Christmas and the New Year processing arrests and cleaning up vomit in the drunk tank.

She calls Coach Randall and she tries not to cry. She calls Tonio and he doesn't answer. She tries not to feel like an abomination but she can't.

* * *

Emily comes back from the resort and apologizes so hard she cries. They talk, finally, really talk, and they forgive each other, and they try to make plans for the future that will make both of them happy.

Maggie thinks maybe this was what they needed to turn things around, to be happy again like they were in Tampa.

But it isn't.

Because all of the conversations in the world can't resolve the issue that they want different types of lives, that they may be completely different people who worked really well for one moment in one place.

Maggie can feel Emily slipping through her fingers. She texts less, she nags Maggie to stop taking extra shifts and stay home with her less, she stays out late with her friends more, she's asleep when Maggie gets home and gone when Maggie wakes up.

And Maggie isn't happy in the relationship, really; she doesn't remember what it was like when it was easy. When everyday wasn't a struggle to try to keep this little family in tact.

But Emily is her family. Emily is her family, and she is so desperate for family.

So Maggie tries and tries and tries and tries. She does anything she can think of. She surprises Emily with date nights, perfectly timed for after big exams or paper so they don't mess with her study schedule. She goes into credit card debt to bring her sushi and take her to that new place that opened recently. She spends what she's been trying to scrape together for a bike on a new couch because Emily hates their couch.

She writes love notes and leaves them around the apartment. She brings her flowers and sends her sweet texts during the day. She gives Emily massages after long days at school and quizzes her before tests and grits her teeth and smiles and cajoles Emily into inviting her shitty friends over as often as she wants to.

She stays up after overnight shifts, even when she's desperate to be sleeping, to make Emily breakfast or just talk to her in the morning before Em goes to school. She helps Emily with the DIY projects she brings home to brighten up the apartment, even though Maggie hates crafting.

She does everything Emily has ever asked for in the bedroom, and when Emily's too worn out afterwards to touch her back, she just kisses her and tells her she loves her and that it's not about keeping score, it's about just making each other feel loved.

She tries and she tries and she tries because this is her family and you don't walk out on your family.

She tries to be that person she was, in Tampa. The one Emily fell in love with. The one Emily moved across the country for. The one Emily was desperate for. The one Emily opened up her life for.

And she doesn't want to still be that person, not really. Not that person, frozen in time, locked in at age nineteen with a cocky swagger and notches on her bedpost and a group of fans that follow her around. She wants to be a cop, she wants to be a detective. She wants to be an adult.

But she wants to be all of that with Emily.

* * *

But as the months pass, and Emily drifts further and further, and they fight more and more, Maggie starts to wonder if she'll survive it when Emily leaves her. When Emily kicks her out, when Emily pushes her out the door.

And she tries and tries and tries not to think about her soulmate, not to wonder if it would be this hard with her.

Because Emily is her family, and she's not going to abandon her family just because of marks on her arms when she was a kid and a swooping feeling in her stomach sometimes, and a tiredness behind her eyes every once in a while that doesn't belong to her.

Emily is real – flesh and blood and hair and smile – and Emily is her family. Emily has sacrificed so much for her, and Maggie doubts her soulmate – brilliant and loved and strong and successful – even wants to meet her.

* * *

Emily's parents come back to town for her 24th birthday, in June.

They all go out to dinner for Em's birthday, but the next day Maggie has to work, so Emily hangs out with her parents by herself.

Maggie has an incredibly shitty day at work. She's been taking a lot of shifts lately to be able to afford her present for Emily – an entire weekend away at this cabin she found out in the mountains. No work, no school, no shitty friends. Just the two of them.

But today Maggie's exhausted from everything it took to get that, and today her partner broke the arm of this black kid he was arresting, and Maggie had to hold back his screaming little sister, and the arrest was kind of bogus in the first place, and she wants to scream herself.

This isn't why she became a cop, to terrorize little black kids.

She walks in the door, already slipping out of her fucking uniform, and she wants nothing more than to drink a beer in the shower and then flop on the bed with Em and forget this day ever happened. But she walks in the door and Emily is standing there, brimming for a fight.

And, boy, do they fight.

Apparently Emily's parents are insisting that they move, right now, immediately. Tomorrow. They looked at apartments today, the three of them, and they found one, and Emily wants to move tomorrow. Their furniture is shit so they'll just leave it and get new stuff, she says, they won't even need a truck. It's close to school, she says, it'll be better for us.

And Maggie is just standing there, her uniform top half unbuttoned, her tie askew, and it's like Emily has never met her.

Like everything she's told Em in almost five years about her own family, about her trauma, never even existed.

Like the fact that she lives here too doesn't even matter.

Like _she_ doesn't matter.

Like she _is_ an abomination.

Like it's easy for Emily to pick the new apartment with the marble countertops over Maggie, her _partner_. Her girlfriend of almost five years. Her family.

And Maggie has been trying and trying and trying and she would _never_ abandon her family, but it's happening again. She didn't do anything wrong this time, but it's happening again.

"I'm moving," Emily says, finally. "You can come or not, Maggie, but I'm not staying here."

And Maggie can't even afford this shithole without her, and it turns out that she's been at someone else's mercy this entire time.

She's lost her home again.

She orphaned all over again. She's abandoned all over again. And she's been trying so desperately, working to desperately, to make Emily feel loved and cared for and Emily hasn't even been trying – hardly at all – and now Maggie is the one being left.

She's being tossed aside, again. And not even for a moral conviction, this time. Just for an open floor plan and nicer countertops and an in-unit washing machine.

She turns on her heel and she walks out.

She goes to a bar, and an aggressive blonde woman who looks like a grown-up version of Eliza Wilke hits on her, hard, and she's so fucked up from what just happened and from the last two years with Emily and from her entire life that she gets completely wasted and lets not-Eliza take her home and lets not-Eliza fuck her and fucks not-Eliza to within an inch of her life.

And she's never hated herself so much, not ever.

* * *

She doesn't even have to tell Emily what happened. She comes back to the apartment hours after she left, disheveled, and clearly just fucked.

Emily screams at her, and she deserves it.

Emily tells her that she doesn't deserve to be happy, that she's a monster, and she's right.

Emily tells her that no one will ever love her like Emily did, and that she just destroyed the best thing that will ever happen to her, and Maggie agrees.

She doesn't defend herself, she doesn't yell back. She doesn't cry.

She leaves without packing a bag.

She's never felt more like an abomination.


	5. Detective Sawyer

Maggie wonders if she'll ever stop hating herself for what she did to Emily.

As the years pass, and Maggie reflects – and spends some time in therapy – she comes to realize that she hadn't ruined something good, when she'd cheated. She ruined something that was bad, something that expiring, something that was never going to work out.

And, she finally realizes, it wasn't just not working out because they weren't soulmates, but it wasn't working out because they simply weren't right for each other. They weren't a good fit. Soulmates or no soulmates, cheating or no cheating, they were going to break up eventually.

That still doesn't justify the horrible thing that she did, it doesn't erase the incredible pain she caused Emily (and herself), it doesn't mean that she'll ever forgive herself for that night.

But it helps her get over Emily, slowly. It helps her understand that she and Emily were never going to make it.

It plants a small seed of doubt in her mind about what Emily had said, that last night. She had believed it – that she didn't deserve to be happy, that she was a monster, that no one would ever love her like that again – completely and fully, for a long time. But as she starts to realize that their relationship had turned sour long before she'd cheated, that maybe Emily didn't know her as well as they'd both thought, that maybe Emily wasn't as in love with her by the end either, she starts to wonder.

Maybe Emily wasn't _completely_ right.

Maybe, just maybe, she deserves to be happy.

Maybe, just maybe, she deserves to have a soulmate who loves her.

Maybe, just maybe, she'll meet someone who will see past all of her bullshit and love her.

She's terrified, of course, because all her soulmate knows about her is the word abomination and how much sex she's had and maybe, if she's perceptive, that she cheated.

She wonders if that's enough to turn her soulmate off of her. She wonders if her soulmate will even want to know her.

But she, finally, starts to wonder if maybe she _deserves_ a brilliant girl who starts with A and has the weight of the world on her shoulders, who reads and surfs and likes science and loves to succeed.

And she hopes and she wants and she works to make herself worthy, to become the best version of herself. To be the type of person that girl deserves to have for a soulmate.

That brilliant girl who loved snakes, once upon a time.

* * *

Maggie's post-Emily love life is basically just years of meaningless and semi-meaningless sex.

She's committed herself to her work, fully and completely, in a way that dwarfs her first year on the force. She focuses on making enough money to support the life she wants and on fulfilling herself entirely through work. When she has nights off, she'll find a woman in a bar, or on a website, or in her phone's contacts, and she'll sleep with her for a night or a week or a month. She hooks up with blondes and brunettes and several different aliens with some interesting stuff going on. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad and there was that one time just a few months after she'd starting sleeping with people again when it was incredible and she didn't really know why.

But it's never about feelings and it's never about commitment and it's never about compromising anything in the life she's building for herself.

It's never about losing her independence. It's never about giving someone else the upper hand.

She wonders, sometimes, what would happen if she meets her soulmate right now. When the idea of making room in her life for someone else is completely appalling.

But, luckily, her soulmate stays away. She seems to be having her own meaningless sex – it never happens more than once every few months, so Maggie doesn't think she's in a relationship. She's never happy before it happens, and she always Resonates sadness and guilt and self-loathing and disappointment after.

Maggie can't totally understand it, because her soulmate is brilliant but can't seem to figure out that she deserves better.

* * *

Her soulmate doesn't Resonate too much during those years.

Determination comes through most often, and a steady focus. Sometimes disappointment and regret push through hard, usually about once a month – sharply for about an hour and then dully for the rest of day.

Grief comes through, sometimes. Maggie recognizes the day it's sharpest – it's the same day every year. She remembers the Resonance when she was seventeen, and she assumes it's the anniversary of the death of her parent or sibling or whoever that was that she lost.

Mostly she Resonates exhaustion. She sends a tired feeling that makes the back of Maggie's eyes itch, like she's constantly staying up too late and staring at screens and working too much. She seems to have a series of small triumphs, things that make her Resonate small bursts of pride or satisfaction.

About once a week she gently Resonates love and something that feels like being sated, and that feeling peaks a couple times year and nearly overflows, and she wonders if it's a birthday of someone close to her, or another type of special anniversary with someone she loves.

Sometimes she burns her fingers, just at the tips, like she's carrying around something that's too hot or she's grabbed a hot pot handle. Once she sliced her hand open in a couple different places, like she was holding something that shattered, and she had to get stitches. Sometimes her ribs nearly crack under what feels like the tightest hug in the world. She rolls an ankle, once.

And that's pretty much it. It's not much to go on, even if Maggie were actively looking for her.

* * *

In March, when Maggie is 26, an arrest goes bad and the suspect stabs Maggie in the stomach, on her left side, between her ribs and her hipbone.

She's never been stabbed before. She wouldn't recommend it. It hurts like a bitch.

She bleeds a lot, and the rookie she's working with freaks out so much that Maggie has to call the ambulance herself.

She gets a bunch of stiches and has to stay in the hospital for two days because she gets a low-grade infection, and it fucking hurts. But the drugs make her nauseous, so she tries to grit her teeth and survive the pain, taking her meds as infrequently as she can bear.

It hurts so much that she forgets to mentally apologize to her soulmate.

* * *

The stabbing turns out to be a bit of a blessing. She's on desk duty for a couple months after, until she's cleared to return to the field, and she impresses her captain with the great work she's able to do. She ends up assisting the detectives on a couple open cases, and she personally cracks two of them open.

Her captain starts talking to her about accelerating her promotion timeline, and schedules a date for her detective's exam.

She's thrilled.

* * *

But as Maggie's fortunes are looking up, the Resonances from her soulmate start to sharply tilt.

It becomes clear, over the course of a couple of months, that she's struggling.

She's no longer Resonating determination and focus and tiredness and every once in a while disappointment. The Resonances have changed, and Maggie can't quite pinpoint when it happened, because it was so slow and gradual, but as she's spending more time at her desk and prepping for her exam, she realizes with a jolt that it's been weeks since her soulmate has been happy.

The Resonances have increased in both frequency and intensity, and absolutely none of them are good. Maggie's getting a lot of stress and worry and anxiety, like the weight of the world is on her shoulders and she's starting to sink under it. She hasn't sent that loving sated feeling in months. Just guilt and hate and fear and apprehension.

So it doesn't seem unrelated that she starts in on what seems like some pretty self-destructive habits.

Maggie's pretty sure she's starts drinking, a lot. It's a little hard to tell, and it varies from pair to pair, but some people say that they can tell when the feelings Resonating through the soulbond are drunk feelings. Some people say they can only tell because the feelings swing so quickly, or Resonate so strongly, but others talk about a fuzziness or dizziness to the feelings themselves.

And, of course, if the hangover is extreme, you might feel that a bit too.

Maggie isn't getting fuzziness or dizziness, exactly, but it's certainly different. She thinks of it as a blur, like a smudge on a camera lens. She's felt it before, on-and-off since she was about twenty – her soulmate clearly isn't a teetotaler – but it's happening a lot more lately, and the timing lines up perfectly with when focus went away and anxiety and despair started.

Lately, late at night, the stress and worry and self-loathing blur a little, and usually get stronger. And now, they're often followed by increasing amounts of what seems like incredibly unsatisfying sex.

Sex that seems like it comes out of nowhere – never preceded by feelings of love or even lust or affection or nerves or butterflies. Sex that is only preceded by blurry feelings of anxiety, of disappointment, of desperation, of self-hate.

Sex that Maggie feels in all the right parts of her body but always leaves her cold and lonely and terribly sad. Sex that always makes her soulmate Resonate disappointment and self-hate and disgust even more strongly when it's over.

Maggie worries about her, a lot.

* * *

Maggie earns her detective shield when she's 27. She's the youngest in the department to get it, and she's the only woman this year, and she's only the third brown woman with a shield on the force, and she's so proud of herself.

She's completely thrown herself into this job – putting her entire life into it, barely seeing her apartment, hardly ever thinking about anything else – and it's paid off.

She's succeed. She's done what she's wanted to do since that first year in Tampa. Her parents couldn't stop her and Emily couldn't stop her and her shitty roommates in her crappy apartment couldn't stop her.

She made it.

She goes out and buys herself a whole new wardrobe – high-waisted dark jeans and button down shirts and blazers and a couple of henleys, and several pairs of low boots she can run in.

She's happy for months.

And she also starts to open her eyes, to look around, to see the world again. Now that she has her badge, she feels ready.

Not just to change from Office Sawyer – the best officer on the force – to Detective Sawyer – the best detective on the force – but also to start being Maggie again. To have a life outside of the precinct.

To turn her head and start to build the full, robust, happy life that she hasn't let herself think about since Emily.

But her work still matters to her, of course, and they've just announced that they're starting a science division, which will handle all crimes involving aliens and other weird shit, and Maggie wants in.

She doesn't settle – she sets her goal that in two years, she'll be in the new division.

* * *

She makes it in one, when she's 28.

The day she finds out about the promotion starts out shitty. Her soulmate is clearly deteriorating. She's drinking more – and starting earlier in the day – and she's hungover more and she even more stressed and anxious. She's Resonating nearly all of the time now, and it varies between panic and a dull sense of dread, between extreme stress and a deadening sort of pessimistic apathy, between exhaustion that aches behind Maggie's eyes and blurry unsatisfying sex that tingles Maggie's body and almost always makes her want to cry.

Maggie is nearly beside herself with worry.

And then, that morning, something must happen because Maggie feels a hard hot knot of dread drop into her gut, and it really seems like her soulmate is at rock bottom.

So Maggie's kind of out of sorts – she's worried and nervous and scared for her soulmate, but also having trouble separating her own emotions from the Resonances – until she gets the news.

And she knows the timing sucks, but she can't even feel bad about how much joy she must be Resonating back.

Because she fucking did it. She's going to be protecting one of the most marginalized and misunderstood communities in the city. She's going to be part of an elite group of detectives chosen because they're smarter and more compassionate and braver than all the rest.

She hadn't even known this job had existed, back when she was first trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, but this, absolutely and positively, is it.

She celebrates by herself, not even calling the girl she's sleeping with – an alien named Erja with luminous blue skin – because this is for her.

So she's alone to feel her soulmate's despair, which gets blurrier and blurrier as the night goes on.

In the wee hours of the morning it shifts into a deadened sort of despair as it gets clearer, like she's sobering up and looking around and realizing that everything she's been afraid of happening is coming true.

Then a quick spike of fear – pure terror – then confusion for hours.

Then she completely startles Maggie by Resonating hope, for the first time in what feels like years.

* * *

That night is a turning point for both of them, it turns out.

Maggie has the job she's always wanted, and something has seriously changed for her soulmate. The stress and worry and anxiety and self-hate have pretty much vanished, but Maggie's convinced that's because she's become a UFC fighter.

She's never had that much physical pain Resonate before, but now it's constant. What feels like broken fingers, broken ribs, kicks in the gut, blows to the head.

Maggie flat-out panics for the first week or so. She doesn't know if it's a series of dark-alley brawls or interpersonal violence or an abusive partner, but she's sure something terrible is happening. Each and every day, her soulmate is being physically attacked and it's not stopping and it's not getting better and Maggie is completely unraveling with worry.

She starts starting calling hospitals in every major city on the west coast and Alaska and Hawaii, just in case she's still there, asking for a woman presenting with broken ribs and concussions and internal bleeding, but none of them give her any information.

She wonders if she's wrong about where she lives, or if she isn't going the hospital.

Her worry just ticks up and up and up.

But, as it keeps going with a serious kind of regularity to it – it happens in what feels like 12-hour or 16-hour shifts – Maggie starts to realize that this must be her soulmate's new normal. She hasn't been Resonating terror or desperation or even fear. Just resolve and fatigue and courage and satisfaction.

It kind of starts to seems like it's…a _job_.

UFC is one of the only things that makes sense, honestly.

And, a little less than six months after this starts, she feels, one day, a blaze of pride and joy happiness and grit shoot through her. It comes right after what feels like the most intense fight she's ever had, and Maggie wonders who she defeated.

She holds onto her aching ribs, and spares a moment of pity for the other guy – if this is what triumph feels like, she wouldn't want to experience the other side.

But even though her entire body is aching, she can't stop grinning.

She still doesn't totally get it, she doesn't totally know what's happening or why she's doing it, but she's really fucking proud of her.

* * *

The UFC thing, if that's what it is, seems to be her soulmate's new fulltime job. She goes weeks, sometimes, without bruising a rib, but it always happens again eventually. She Resonates adrenaline a lot, sometimes fear, often determination. Often pride.

Maggie shifts from thinking she's UFC to thinking maybe she's in law enforcement, or a vigilante, or maybe a street enforcer. As a year passes, and the fights and determination increase but the fear decreases, Maggie becomes convinced she's a soldier.

Maggie worries about her, but she can't deny that this new life is making her soulmate happier than she's been in years and years.

Maggie's happier too, since getting her badge. She moves into a better apartment – an airy one bedroom all to herself – and she buys herself a Triumph Bonneville T100 that she's lusted after since high school. She even has a couple of girlfriends – people she actually calls her girlfriend, people she dates exclusively for a period of months. It's a first, since Emily. She feels like she's finally coming out of the other side. Like maybe she's matured enough to be able to handle this again.

Like maybe if she met her soulmate now, she'd be able to commit to her.

She finds herself wanting to meet her soulmate in a way that feels stronger and more fierce than anytime since she'd first kissed Emily almost ten years ago.

But her first relationship ends in a mutual breakup when the woman meets her soulmate.

The second ends when the woman decides she isn't actually gay.

The third ends when the woman cheats on Maggie.

The fourth woman turns out to be cheating on her soulmate with Maggie.

The fifth breaks up with her and Maggie can never confirm it but she's pretty sure it's because she's Latina.

Maggie starts seeking out women with A, women who grew up on the west coast, and she finds a lot of them.

The first A ends when Maggie spends too much time at work.

The second A isn't actually gay and the third A gets back with an ex and the fourth A cheats on her.

Maggie keeps trying, but she's tired. She's tired, and she's done practicing, and she's done waiting.

She just wants to meet her fucking soulmate already.


	6. Supergirl

It seems like her soulmate really cares about Supergirl.

When the Girl of Steel first appears on the scene, Maggie barely notices, because she thinks her soulmate is dying. Terror – pure and hot and scalding – is racing through her body. Maggie looks up in the air and sees an airplane about to fall from the sky, and she wonders if her soulmate is on that plane, or if she has a loved one on it.

And then the plane is saved, and Maggie feels relief – feels her gut loosening and her heart slowing – but she also feels fear and confusion and worry and frustration.

Maggie wonders if she was on that plane. She wonders if she's in National City.

* * *

It takes a little while, but Maggie realizes that her soulmate's mood is tied pretty closely to Supergirl's successes and failures. Because of her job in the science division, Maggie has access to more of the information on Supergirl's escapades than the average citizen, and from the first day the beautiful alien flies around in that suit, Maggie's soulmate is pretty much synched up with her.

Supergirl is tracking a hellgrammite, who Maggie is pretty sure is just a giant disgusting bug. Maggie feels a stab in her leg one night while she's home making dinner. She falls to the ground, barely repressing a scream. She feels like she's being beaten up, tossed around, physically damaged. She feels determination and anger and fear course through her.

Then, as adrenaline ends and the pain really starts to throb, she feels guilt and pride.

She sees the report the next day that Supergirl defeated the hellgrammite, with the help of an unnamed federal agent.

Maggie wonders if that agent was on the flight to Geneva.

* * *

Maggie stops looking for women who start with A from the west coast.

The whole thing is souring her, and she doesn't want to meet her soulmate already jaded and ready to be dumped, or frustrated and waiting for an expiration date.

Whenever the right A comes along, the surfer and the snake enthusiast, Maggie wants to be ready for her. Maggie wants to be all-in.

So she gets off the apps and she stops leaping at every woman with an A and she just lives her life.

Not too long after her last A – not too long after that flight to Geneva – when Maggie's leg has finally stopped throbbing, a terrifying man in a metal suit shows up on a public street and attacks Supergirl. His name is Reactron, Maggie learns, and he's a sworn enemy of Superman, and he's here to take revenge on the Cousin of Steel.

Maggie's soulmate is Resonating worry and concern from the time he shows up until the time Supergirl defeats him in a parking lot outside of Cat Grant's party.

And right before Supergirl defeats him (witnesses claim she reached into his chest and pulled out his nuclear reactor with her bare hand, which Maggie can't quite believe) Maggie feels determination and satisfaction and nervousness, followed by relief and triumph and pride.

Maggie wonders, for a hot second, if Supergirl is her soulmate.

She hopes not.

* * *

Thanksgiving is never a happy holiday for Maggie. None of them are, particularly, but Thanksgiving is so much about family and the family home, and Maggie's never going back to Blue Springs and she's stopped trying to call Tonio on holidays because he never answers and it makes her so sad each time, so she's not that into it.

She has an open invite from Coach Randall to spend the holiday down in Tampa with her and her family, but the plane tickets are always unbelievably expensive and Maggie can make time-and-a-half taking on shifts at work, and the math never quite works out.

So she always spends it alone.

Every other year since the bond opened, her soulmate has always been pretty fine around Thanksgiving, or at least not upset enough to Resonate anything, but this year is different.

Maggie can tell that she's drunk pretty early in the day, because her feelings are so strong, and are changing so quickly, and they have that sort of blurred quality that Maggie hasn't felt in a while, since she became a soldier or a vigilante or a superhero or whatever. And she's feeling terror and anger at the same time, and the holiday clearly doesn't go well. Maggie's alone in her apartment, with her Thai food and her movie, in her sweats and her socks, and she's pretty sure her soulmate is in the middle of some serious family drama, and it's lasting hours.

All the power goes out, of course, and while Supergirl is swooping around trying to help, Maggie finally feels sadness, followed by intense relief. Like her soulmate had been Resonating exhaustion to her at a low level for so long that they'd both tuned it out, but now it's just been turned off, and the blank space is soft and soothing and beautiful.

Maggie hopes she's okay.

She hopes the relief sticks.

* * *

It doesn't.

A military drone goes missing, tries to kill a General and a Major ( _Lois Lane's_ family, Maggie realizes) on a crowded street. Supergirl fights it, again and again. And Maggie realizes that one of the fights is going on at this exact moment, and her soulmate is worried but not angry or determined, and Supergirl is getting thwacked and fighting back, hard, and Maggie is pretty sure that her soulmate isn't Kryptonian.

But then, just a bit later, her soulmate gets in what feels like another fight for her life. Adrenaline courses through Maggie, and she has to sit down and hold herself because her soulmate is clearly being tossed around a room and hit with something that feels like a pipe and kicked in the chest.

And the adrenaline spikes, and then, like the bottom falling out of a bucket of water, it's drained in a gush. Maggie feels guilt, and self-loathing, and worry, and sadness, and she wonders if her soulmate just killed someone.

It's not the first time she's wondered it. She doesn't know if her soulmate is a serial killer or a cop or a vigilante or a solider or what, but it's not the first time.

Maggie's never killed anyone, and she hopes not to.

Having that feeling Resonate makes her feel unclean, sort of. Guilty, even though she wasn't the one who did it. Worried, certainly. Afraid, and nervous, yes – both for her soulmate and **_of_** her soulmate.

She wonders, sometimes, what kind of person she's been matched with. If she's even a good person at all.

And she's spent so long wondering if her soulmate will want to meet her, even though she's an abomination, but now she starts to wonder, just one or two times, if she'll be the one to turn away. If her soulmate is the one who is the abomination. If she's been matched with a monster.

After the kill, if that's what it was, her soulmate is still scared but that's fading, and then it all fades away. And Maggie is left alone, crouched on the floor under her desk, holding onto what feels like broken ribs, confused and wondering and afraid.

* * *

There's a terrible earthquake just a couple days after, and Supergirl is nowhere to be seen. The people on the news are saying she lost her powers, and Maxwell Lord is out there blowing smoke out of his ass, stirring up panic that she'll never recover and the city will be left unprotected. Maggie straightens her badge on her belt and rolls her eyes and walks out of the precinct to protect the city.

Maggie isn't too scared. She's been living in California long enough by this point that it isn't her first earthquake. She's prepared for this, she's ready to help people stay calm and safe until their fear passes and their homes are safe again. This is why Maggie joined the force – to help.

But it's hard to remain levelheaded when her soulmate is so desperately afraid.

And the timing is suspicious but her soulmate seems pretty tough and Maggie is pretty sure it isn't the earthquake that's making her terrified like this.

Because for hours and hours, she's afraid. And angry.

And then the fear spikes, with some resolve, and a surprising amount of hate.

Then, all at once, something changes. Maggie gets a stitch in her side, like her soulmate is gasping for breath. She feels a recoil against her shoulder, like an echo of the kick of a rifle. Then the now familiar feeling of being tossed across a room, and a sharp pain in her mouth.

And Maggie knows it's the soulbond, obviously, because she's standing in the middle of the street and nothing has touched her, but she still reaches up and brushes her chin, just under her mouth, and checks it for blood anyway.

After a moment, the fear passes, replaced by a little bit of relief and an overwhelming amount of confusion.

An hour or so later, something dramatic must happen. Maggie is looking at security footage of Supergirl stopping an armed robbery at a bodega, and something seems off about her posture, and Maggie's trying to figure it out. It's hard to focus, with her soulbond being so open, and her soulmate having what seems like quite a day, but Maggie's trying to push through it.

But then, all of the sudden, about an hour after the fight ends, Maggie feels something come through the soulbond that she's never felt from her soulmate before. She feels the confusion and worry and anger fade, replaced with an overwhelming deluge of wonder and love and safety and gratefulness.

Maggie thinks about her seventh Revelation, to be relieved.

It seems like, just maybe, her soulmate has finally found someone to relieve her.

Maggie's happy for her, immensely happy, but she can't help but wonder if her soulmate will even have room for her, if they ever meet.

* * *

It's not too long later, though, not more than a month or so, that things definitely take a turn for the worse.

Maggie's own life is going pretty well. She's started dating someone, a real estate agent named Molly with blonde hair and great taste in craft beer, and she's obviously not Maggie's soulmate but she's kind of great, and it's simple in way things haven't been in a long time and Maggie likes her.

But her soulmate can't seem to catch a break.

She feels worry Resonating, and Supergirl has been missing for a day or so, and Maggie's sure now that they're connected in some way. Maybe her soulmate is just a superfan, or maybe they're friends ( _or lovers_ , an evil voice in her head whispers), but there's something there.

But Supergirl has been missing for a day or so, and her soulmate is becoming frantic with worry. Maggie is nearly tearing her own hair out; if she can feel the desperation this strongly, she can't really believe her soulmate is even still standing.

And then it gets…weird. She's never felt anything like this before, and she googles it later, and no one else seems to have either. She still feels something Resonating, but it's…different. It's kind of indescribable, but it's like the feelings are being projected in colors that don't exist, or from a dimension that Maggie can't access, or in a language that doesn't have any shape.

It feels…alien.

But it's strong, one of the strongest things Maggie has ever felt through the bond.

She barely notices the physical pain Resonating of having something smashed on her head, having her arms pulled and yanked, being hit and punched in the stomach. Because her soulmate's heart is being torn apart at the seams. She's desperate and afraid and terrified and determined and so fiercely loving, and Maggie can barely breathe with the force of it all.

And suddenly it snaps back to normal – back into colors Maggie can see and language she can understand, back into a dimension Maggie can experience – like it had been a dream, but the Resonances keep coming, wave after wave, of fury, of despair, and then, finally, of relief.

And she's relieved for what feels like only five seconds before it starts again, and Maggie wonders how she survives it all.

But the amount of love that her soulmate sent comforts Maggie, in a way. Anyone who can love like that – who can be so desperate for someone like that – that person can't be a monster. That person can't be an abomination. Yes, it seems like she's killing, but Maggie isn't afraid of her anymore.

She seems protective. Fierce, but not murderous. Every violent thing she's ever done has had a burst of love or protectiveness right before it. It seems like she'll hurt and kill but only in defense of this person or these people that she so desperately loves.

So Maggie isn't afraid of her, not like that, not anymore. She's not a monster. She just may already have enough people to love.

She may not want to add Maggie to her list.

But Maggie doesn't have time to linger either, because there's another fight late that same night, and she's hurt, tossed around, afraid.

She chokes, her throat closing, and even though she's alone and her own throat is open Maggie claws at it, trying to peel off the hand that's closing her windpipe with an inhuman amount of force.

And then something must happen, and she feels a burst of pure terror and denial and then her arm vibrates with something, and then she's completely flooded with disbelief and self-loathing and guilt, just pure self-hatred filling her up. And she's felt this sort of feeling Resonate before – her soulmate is no stranger to hating herself.

But this is on an entirely different scale. Everything before, even when she's probably killed, has been a light dusting of snow and this is an avalanche.

And there was a disturbance, up on a rooftop, called into the precinct, and reports of flying people. But by the time Maggie and her team get there, all that's left is a pool of blood and scuff marks. Maggie takes a sample of the blood, but isn't surprised when it doesn't ping any databases.

It isn't human.

It was a lot of blood.

Someone died up on that roof.

The Resonances don't stop – the grief, the despair, the overwhelming way she hates herself. It nearly incapacitates Maggie for weeks. It doesn't fade, it doesn't dull, it doesn't soften. It just stays, hard and sharp and punishing. It throbs, it grows, it pulses with life.

Maggie honestly wonders if her soulmate is going to survive it. She desperately, desperately hopes that her soulmate won't hurt herself, that she'll get help, that she'll go to that person that used to make her feel loved once a week and will keep herself safe.

That she'll still be there, for Maggie to find.

That she'll remember that someone is waiting for her, even if that person is just an abomination.

But finally, after weeks of this, weeks of Maggie barely being able to work, barely being able to look at her girlfriend, barely being able to feed herself, it changes. It sharpens, just for a moment, before it cracks, and relief floods in. It's relief but it's not calming, it's not relaxing – it's like putting out a forest fire with a tsunami. Maggie is still overwhelmed and buffeted and reeling from it, but it's different. It's easier.

Maggie wonders who forgave her.

And, as those weekly feelings of sated love come back, Maggie wonders just who it was that she needed forgiveness from.

* * *

There are a series of missing persons cases that turn out to be nasty homicide cases, and they're given to Warren and Draper, two men who don't work in Maggie's division. And she knows some of the missing people are aliens – it's incredibly clear in the autopsies because one of them has honest to god _gills_ – but guys like Warren and Draper treat her division like a joke, so they don't transfer the case.

It makes Maggie's blood boil.

She opens her own investigation, working it on nights and weekends.

So Sarah, the office assistant over in Homicide, texts her when two feds come in asking Warren and Draper for help on the same case. Maggie basically sprints over, but she only catches sight of their backs as they leave – a woman and a man, one white, one black.

The woman, Maggie can't help but notice, has a very good looking back.

She interrogates Warren and Draper, back in their office, but they just roll their eyes.

Warren just eats his donut, eyes hostile, and Draper keeps calling the aliens "weird."

She wants to snap their necks.

A few days later, Warren is shot and Draper vanishes and Maggie burns with curiosity. Even though Warren is a xenophobic piece of shit, she sends him flowers.

She visits the docks, down where he was shot. There's his car and his blood and two shell casings from a police standard-issue gun. Warren was only shot once, and whoever hit him was an excellent marksman. There isn't a bullet on the ground or in the car.

Maggie wonders if someone else took the second bullet. But there's no other blood.

Maybe they were wearing a vest.

Maybe it was one of the feds.

Draper never comes back to work.

When he regains consciousness, Warren tells everyone that Draper shot him.

No one else ends up decapitated.

Maggie has a conversation with her captain, and gets assigned all the "weird" cases by default.

The feds never come back.

* * *

Supergirl turns evil, and, as expected, Maggie's soulmate doesn't take it too well. It seems like she's taking it pretty personally, like she's personally hurt by Supergirl's betrayal of the city.

She hurts her arm – maybe a break, maybe a fracture – and she doesn't stop Resonating fear and anger until Supergirl is contained again.

Maggie wonders if she should start hating Supergirl.

They're almost certainly lovers.

* * *

It's not too long after that when Myriad grips the city. Maggie is taken by it, just like everyone else. She watches herself march out of her house, into the street, before walking to work and sitting down and working like a drone.

She can't remember her own name or her job or Eliza Wilke or Emily or her parents or her motorcycle or any of the things that make her who she is. She can't remember what she cares about or what she thinks or who she is – not at all. She can see and hear and process information, but it's like emotions have never existed. All she has is her directive – her mission. She's completely empty – just a body and a directive and nothing that's _Maggie_.

Except.

Except something is flickering inside of her, something that isn't her directive. Something raw, alive, electric. She doesn't have the ability to think deeply about it, or to remember what emotions are or what they're called, but she feels it. Like standing just on the edge of a fire on a cold night – she's not warmed by it, exactly, but her body knows it's there.

With every part of herself that isn't a drone, she holds onto it. Like wrapping her hands around a flickering flame, she holds it close to herself. She lets it warm her. It doesn't give Maggie her mind back, but it's a tiny piece of herself that isn't taken away.

Then it vanishes, like it's been doused or blown out. Maggie feels nothing. Maggie is nothing.

She's a drone.

And then, suddenly, after some period of time – maybe hours, maybe weeks – she's not. She blinks and comes back to herself, completely herself, Myriad's hold on her brain gone.

Feelings rush in, crowded and unnameable and full and rich and on fire.

She looks around, jaw dropped, at all the drones around her. She can't figure out what's happened to her, and she has her phone in her hand, about to call anyone she can think of, when she realizes what happened.

Her soulmate broke her out.

Her soulmate broke the hold on her mind, broke her free.

Her soulmate is Resonating so hard, and Maggie's still coming out of it so she can't really name the emotions other than guilt and fear and love, but they're the strongest they've ever been in all the years the soulbond has been open, and they feel like screaming in her ears, and they broke her free.

Her soulmate felt so much, felt so hard, that she broke Maggie free.

She saved Maggie's life.

Others start to snap out of Myriad after Cat Grant and Supergirl somehow hack every computer and device in the city, and Maggie busies herself with taking care of everyone around her. And she asks them, _can you feel your soulmate? Is anything Resonating or Reverberating? Did you feel a flicker of them while you were under?_

And they all say no. It's like their soulmates vanished, while they were under Myriad. Like their soulmates didn't exist. Like the soulbond had never existed.

And Maggie doesn't say anything, but she wonders. She wonders if she felt a flicker because her bond is strong, or because her soulmate wasn't under Myriad at first. She wonders how her soulmate broke her out.

She wonders what she did to make herself feel so much crushing guilt.

* * *

Just when Maggie thinks things are getting back to normal, her headache sets in.

She's not stupid; she realizes it's related. This must be part of Myriad. This is an attack, and it's getting stronger and stronger, and Maggie wonders if they're all going to die.

Her soulmate is determined and afraid.

And then, suddenly, she's devastated.

Devastated and abandoned and terrified.

And Maggie's headache is nearly blinding, and she's fallen to the floor, and people around her are already passed out, but she fights to stay conscious. Not to give in, not to let the pain overpower her.

Because her soulmate is feeling more alone and more destroyed than she ever has.

And Maggie doesn't know if she's Supergirl's lover or what, but something is clearly happening to her that's bigger and worse than this deathly headache, and there's a chance that she's a superhero too and could help them all, and, even if she can't, no one should die feeling that abandoned.

Maggie curls up on the floor, under her desk once again, and tries as hard as she can to Resonate strength and compassion and love and determination. To show her soulmate that she's here and that she believes in her.

That, whoever she is, wherever she is, she's not alone. That she's more powerful than she realizes. That she already broke Maggie out of Myriad.

That whatever she's coming up against, she can beat it.

And determination comes trickling back to her, and adrenaline, and fear, and disbelief, and a swooping feeling in her stomach, and Maggie doesn't know what she's doing but she's learned to have faith in her.

And the world is saved, and Maggie can't help but think that her soulmate might have had something to do with it.


	7. Alex

The President is attacked by an alien, and it's a jurisdictional nightmare. Secret Service has authority over the President, science division has jurisdiction over alien crimes, FBI has jurisdiction over federal matters and this is pretty much as federal as it gets. Throw in TSA and she's got herself a real mess.

Maggie knows she's coming into this arm wrestling contest with the smallest muscle, but she's not about to just let them have it without a fight. This is her city, her airport, her population, her mission.

So she's not surprised when she sees all the feds hovering around. She's just fired up and ready to go.

She sees Supergirl approach, walking and talking with a ridiculously hot fed. They're clearly friendly; the fed has a chip on her shoulder when she talks to anyone else but softens a little when she talks directly to the girl in blue.

Maggie's brain tickles her.

The hot fed – Secret Service it turns out – comes over and tries to kick Maggie off the crime scene, and it's not that Maggie wasn't expecting the conversation. She just wasn't expecting how much it feels like foreplay. The fed's words are all business, but there's something unmistakable zinging through the air.

And Maggie doesn't miss that her name starts with A, and she's close to Supergirl, and she carries herself like a soldier. She notices, and she remembers, and she wonders, and she sends a little heartfelt plea to the universe.

Because, good god, sleeping with a superhero or not, she's completely gorgeous.

* * *

She's also, definitely _not_ Secret Service. She's fucking _DEO_ , a black ops secret agent whose best days are probably as complicated as Maggie's worst, and she looks amazing in that all-black catsuit with that gigantic gun on her shoulder.

And DEO are kind of soldiers and they probably work closely with Supergirl regularly and she bets they were involved with that Hellgrammite and that rogue military robot and with Myriad. And it's not that Maggie is sure, but this person the best lead she's had in a long time and she hoping harder than she has in a long time and it just…could possibly be her.

Back in her apartment Maggie pages through her Revelations journal, which she hasn't bothered to open in years and years, and she relives all of it. Not that she needs the reminders, because she remembers everything, but because, for the first time in years and years, it feels like this journal – like her whole damn life – might not have just been an exercise in futility. Like maybe it was actually leading to someone after all. Like maybe she was actually building –piece by impossibly slow piece – something that wouldn't be knocked down.

So Maggie finds Alex's phone number, which takes some serious detecting, and calls her, and invites her out to the alien bar.

And Alex rolls up on a motorcycle that makes Maggie weak in the knees, and she'd looked great in her suit and in her black tactical getup, but this leather jacket and jeans thing is just…well. Unreal.

And it's not that Maggie's unused to being around beautiful women. She's often around beautiful women, and she's, more often than not, _with_ beautiful women. But there's something about Alex – and Maggie doesn't know if it's her look or her vibe or her letter or, just maybe, that she's Maggie's soulmate – that is completely throwing Maggie for a loop. Looking at Alex, being near Alex, is making Maggie feel like a baby gay again, like how she'd felt those first few weeks in Tampa, eyes wide and heart throbbing, looking at all of these girls who might one day like her back.

Maggie's dated a lot of women and slept with a lot of women, but Alex feels like the first girl she's ever seen.

Maggie leads her inside, and, of course, Darla is working, and of course Darla makes some snippy comment, which is bullshit because Maggie and Darla have been over for ages, and Maggie's been with Molly for a while now.

But it's as good an excuse as any. Maggie pointedly comes out to Alex, dropping the gay thing and the Nebraska thing (and the alien dating thing) in the same sentence.

She's hoping Alex will come out too, or will mention Nebraska or the midwest, or where she herself grew up, and Maggie will get a clear sign either way.

But Alex doesn't take the bait, doesn't come out herself as anything but a nerd who knows about alien physiology.

She doesn't mention Nebraska.

Maggie tries to shake it off. She knows it doesn't mean anything. People come out at their own pace, and everyone has a different take on the soulmate thing. Some people aren't actively searching, others think it's bad luck to bring it up to a potential person, and others are so jaded or so over it or so disgusted by the lack of free will that they actively avoid the subject.

( _Of course_ , Maggie's evil voice whispers, _if she's in love with Supergirl she's probably hoping to never meet you_ ).

But before Maggie can gently push Alex at all – ask about where she grew up, if she's seeing anyone – they get a tiny bit of information from an alien (and Maggie gets a sense of Alex's interrogation style, which is… _unethical_ to say the least) and Alex bolts.

And Maggie stays at the table and finishes both of their beers, her mind whirring.

God, she hopes it's Alex.

* * *

They both go to the President's event, her big signing. Alex looks absolutely amazing in the sunshine, and Maggie feels like a pervy teenager, completely unable to stop glowing at just being near her. Maggie decides to ignore the fact that Alex is busy making eyes at Supergirl, up in the sky.

Another fireball comes at the President and they all leap into action. Maggie finds herself next to the Infernian, and she makes a rookie mistake and stands too close, and her gun is heat-visioned into a red-hot poker and she has to drop it, and she loses the upper hand, and she's abducted to a warehouse. She's tied up with a thick rope, and she's scared but the Infernian seems like a monologuer, and for some indefinable reason, Maggie has full faith that Alex will come and get her.

And she does.

With her girlfriend of steel, but whatever.

And Alex is even braver than Maggie'd thought ( _or more in love_ , Maggie's evil voice whispers), because she uses her own body as a distraction when Supergirl takes a hit. And Maggie's brave too, so she finds a pipe just the right weight and chokes up on it and uses the form that took her college team to the state championships two years in a row to knock the hell out of the Infernian.

Alex and her supergirlfriend both look impressed, and Maggie just grins. "You guys are fun," she says, and she means it. It's been a while since she's been in an ass-kicking girl group like this, and she's liking the hell out of it.

Alex patches her up at the DEO and Maggie sees this new side of her – soft and a little uncertain while at the same time steady and dedicated and talented in this way that has nothing to do with creating physical harm.

And beautiful. She's so beautiful.

Maggie can't, for the life of her, figure Alex out. She's sending more than a couple vibes, but she's ignored every hint and vibe that Maggie's sent back her way.

And then Maggie's all fixed up, and it seems like Alex wants Maggie to stay, but also like she can barely meet Maggie's eyes

But Maggie has plans with Molly, and she's not about to miss a date to ogle another woman – even if that woman is, please god, her soulmate – so she leaves.

And she's pretty sure Alex watches her go.

* * *

The next case is a doozy. They get in a street fight and Maggie gets tased, blinking back to consciousness after a few seconds with her head cradled gently in Alex's hands. Alex talks her through it, her voice and her hands surprisingly soft and gentle for someone who had just been wailing on an alien with a baton she'd pulled out of who-knows-where.

They find themselves in the middle of an underground alien fight club, and Maggie hates that she can't stop staring at the little cutout in Alex's dress, just under her sternum. She can't help but compliment Alex, but she manages to keep it relatively professional. But even her simple "you clean up nice" makes Alex completely flustered ("you do too, with the shoes and the hair, and uh, all the…"), and she can't tell if Alex means to be flirting and is bad at it, or if she isn't used to being around human women, or if she's just awkward when she doesn't have at three guns strapped to her outer thighs.

Maggie tries not to let it mean anything.

 _Molly, Molly, Molly_ , Maggie chants to herself.

But now she knows what Alex's hand feels like in her own, and she knows what it's like to watch Alex beat the shit out of a special ops guy while wearing five-inch heels.

And she knows what it's like to watch Alex cradle Supergirl in her hands, eyes full of concern and love.

She wonders if Alex could ever look at her like that, like she isn't an abomination.

They manage to arrest Roulette later, and they couldn't have done it without Supergirl, and Maggie can't understand why but she just can't make herself hate the girl. Maggie _should_ hate her. She's clearly sleeping with her soulmate, and/or with Alex, and Maggie wants to be the only one sleeping with her soulmate and/or with Alex (and _please_ , she pleads, _let them be the same person_ ). But she just can't hate her. Maybe because of the Resonances – maybe because every single time the hero is hurt Maggie's body is flooded with fear and every single time she does something wonderful Maggie's heart expands with joy and love and pride.

What a sick joke that would be, if Maggie can't hate the woman whose stolen her soulmate away from her, just because the Resonances have conditioned her to care?

But Supergirl keeps saving the world and seeming like a genuinely wonderful person, and she's so important to Alex, and even though Alex is brand new somehow she's so important to Maggie. So, even soulmate aside, Maggie can't do anything but respect her.

* * *

Maggie is absolutely furious when the order comes down to let Roulette go. This kind of wealthy, connected, privileged bullshit is why she works at NCPD, not Gotham. Why she's in the science division instead of doing drug busts and turning the other cheek when "important" people are the ones caught.

But orders are orders, and she has to let Roulette go. She doesn't even plant anything on her. She hates being a good cop, sometimes.

Alex shows up, and she doesn't stutter this time, but there's a tightness behind her eyes as she offers to buy Maggie a beer. Maggie can't tell if she's offering a friendly drink with a co-worker or asking her out, but she knows that, even if Molly hadn't shown up just then, her answer would have been no. There's no way she's going out for a drink, alone, at night, when she's so upset about her day at work, with someone she's as drawn to as Alex Danvers. Not while she has a girlfriend. That's not a mistake she'll ever make again.

So she leaves with Molly and she swears that Alex looks...despondent.

Molly notices too. She asks a lot of questions about Alex that night, and the next night, and the next. And Maggie isn't sure that it's Alex, and she's not going to leave this thing with Molly that's been going so well until she's sure. So she's confused, and she's growing more and more worried that Molly's going to leave her, like everyone does.

And she feels the same thing trickling back to her from her soulbond. And she wonders if maybe it's Alex worrying about her, too.

* * *

They go out to drinks. First once, then a bunch of times.

Maggie learns that Alex has great reflexes and is legitimately amazing at pool and has a deep sarcastic streak that she uses to hide how sweet and gentle she can be.

Maggie learns that making Alex laugh might be her new favorite thing.

Maggie learns that Alex is two years younger than her.

Maggie learns that Alex's dad died when Maggie was seventeen. She remembers the sorrow that sliced her up from the inside when she was seventeen.

And there's something a little weird about how Alex says it – how Alex says that her dad died – like that's not the full story. And Maggie remembers that her limbs didn't go numb like they were supposed to when she felt all of that sharp grief, and it kind of makes sense if maybe "dead" isn't exactly the word.

It really, honestly, might be Alex.

She wonders, again and again, if Alex knows that they're soulmates, but isn't saying anything because she doesn't want to know her as anything more than a friend.

She wonders if it's because of Supergirl.

She worries it's because of abomination.

* * *

Molly dumps her, hard.

She calls her insensitive, hard-headed, obsessed with work. She says that Maggie never shares herself at all, that the walls she has up all the time are borderline sociopathic. She hands Maggie the couple t-shirts and toothbrush she'd kept at Molly's, and tells her not to call or come by, ever.

It's far from the worst breakup Maggie's ever had, but she's fucking exhausted.

She's tired of being punished for loving her job. She's tired of being dumped and left by people she actually likes. She's tired of putting in so much work for someone who isn't willing to put it back.

She's tired of trying so fucking hard, all the time, with these women who walk at the first sign of trouble. She's tired of caring like this.

She wonders, for the millionth time, if Emily was right about her. If she's really so unloveable.

And she knows Molly isn't her soulmate, and Emily wasn't her soulmate, and Steph wasn't her soulmate. But she's thirty-one years old, and she's tired of waiting.

Maybe it's Alex, maybe it isn't.

But Maggie's done waiting. It's time to find out.

* * *

"So, Danvers. Met your soulmate yet?"

Alex almost chokes, but Maggie manages to keep her cool. Alex is just so fucking cute – so adorable and so beautiful and so strong and so smart but so easy to fluster – and Maggie can barely handle it.

"Nope, no sign of him yet."

And Maggie had been prepared for a lot of possibilities. For Alex to say yes, that she's happily committed to her soulmate. For Alex to scoff out a laugh and say _I can't believe that youd hadn't figured out that I'm with Supergirl, you call yourself a detective, honestly_. For Alex to say no but she doesn't want to, that she's too much of scientist or a badass to believe in that, to scoff out a laugh that Maggie is such an immature princess girl for even asking.

But Maggie was never, not in her wildest dreams, prepared for this.

For Alex to have said _him_.

Maggie's brain stutters, her mind choosing to shut down and decline to reboot rather than process that pronoun.

All she can think is, on a horrifying loop, _oh my fucking god._

 _Him_.

Maggie resists the urge to crawl under the table and never come out. There is no way this ends well for her. Alex said "him," which means she's either straight or is convinced that she is, and honestly, the second option isn't much better.

And it kind of really seems like Alex really might be Maggie's soulmate, and if Maggie was paired with someone straight or someone in denial – with someone who wouldn't or couldn't love her in the way she wants…jesus. That would be just fucking perfect.

The fucking perfect cap on a fucking perfect life.

Kicked out at fourteen for being a lesbian, and paired with a straight girl who will play her in pool but will never love her back.

Never able to be fully happy – never able to live the life she was destined for – simply because she's gay. Because being gay is such a terrible thing that her soulmate won't even consider it.

Because she's an abomination.

Maggie struggles to reboot her brain, to snap back into the conversation, to say something back to Alex, but her evil little voice is the only thing coming back online.

 _Well_ , it whispers, _at least she isn't fucking Supergirl, then_.

Alex asks about Maggie's soulmate, and Maggie drops a female pronoun ("kind of hoping she'll hurry the fuck up, you know?"), and watches with dismay as Alex's face flicks through at least twelve different emotions.

 _Jesus christ_. All of the out and proud gay women in the world, and Maggie's probably-soulmate is so far in the closet that she has tea with Mr. Tumnus every night? Alex is amazing, and Maggie wants it to be her, but she can't help but wonder why her soulmate couldn't just be a single lesbian from Hawaii with a quick brain and a penchant for bruised ribs.

But Alex is blinking and stuttering, and she finally manages to say, "When did…how did…how do you know your soulmate is a woman?"

Maggie feels, with a weight that nearly crushes her, about twelve years too old for this.

She has her rule about closet cases, after having her heart trampled by so many of them these last few years. No straight girls, no fresh-off-the-boat girls, no "experimenting" girls, no closeted girls who want to pull Maggie back into the soft darkness with them.

Those relationships never work out.

And maybe Alex is her soulmate and maybe she isn't, but that only makes it worse.

If Alex tramples on her, like all the other girls have – if Alex decides she isn't really gay, like all the other girls did – how could Maggie possibly recover from that? Emily hadn't loved her enough and Steph hadn't loved her enough and Molly hadn't loved her enough and she'll carry those scars forever, but if her soulmate didn't?

If Alex didn't?

There are still so many "if's" but Maggie find herself – still sitting down at her favorite table in her favorite bar across from this beautiful woman who has quickly become her favorite person – overwhelmed with devastation.

She's not proud of it, later, but she's frustrated and sad, so she does the only thing she can think to do in that moment (other than reaching across the table and taking Alex's face in her hands and finding out a _different_ way if Alex could like girls).

She leans forward and cocks her head, some of her frustration probably coming across as aggression. "How do you know yours is a man?"

Alex –not completely unexpectedly – flips out. She stutters, she sputters, she equivocates. "I, it…uh. I mean, just, _of course_ he's a man," she manages.

But that's even more exhausting. Because this idea – that Alex's soulmate is going to be man, that any woman's soulmate is going to be man – is still so pervasive, even now. Even if Alex had known that she liked girls – and it seems like she hadn't – it doesn't mean the world would have told her a female soulmate was really an option. There's this thing, where girls will kiss other girls, and sleep with other girls, and be in serious committed relationships with other girls, but will still expect their soulmates to be men. And it's fine, with society. It's _cute_ , almost.

It's this weird expectation that what happens before your soulmate doesn't count, so it's not like you're _really_ gay. It's just fun between girls while they're waiting. "Open for the wait," they call it.

Maggie hates it. There's nothing wrong with being bisexual or anything else, but there's something seriously wrong with that. With being "gay light" or "temporarily bi" or "open until" or whatever the fuck they call it – with insisting, firmly and consistently and without any proof, that a man will be the endpoint, even if girls have been every single other point.

And it – the expectation that the pot at the end of the rainbow holds a man – just makes this conversation so much harder. Because liking girls, having noticed girls, crushing on girls, hooking up with girls, doesn't even open up what they need to talk about.

And that pisses Maggie off so much – makes her so mad, makes her so frustrated at the world that told her and told Alex and tells everyone that their soulmates must be men – that she digs in, one eyebrow up.

"You sure about that?"

But Alex panics – genuinely seems to panic, and her tears are rising and nearly spilling over.

Maggie just made her start to _cry_.

Maggie snaps back, horrified with herself, realizing with a blast of guilt that this is no way to treat a friend, especially not someone who may be wondering about this for the very first time. Especially not someone who has burrowed her way so far into Maggie's heart.

Especially not someone who, even if she can't ever love her back, might be her soulmate.

She tries to play it off as a joke, flashing a dimple and waving a dismissive hand in the air. "I'm fucking with you, Danvers," she lies, but it falls flat.

She feels really bad, so she tries to explain. She wonders, as she opens her mouth, at the depth of her reaction to seeing Alex upset, to seeing Alex close to tears. It's unsettling.

She kind of has to be her soulmate, but even then. This soulmate thing is no joke.

"I mean, of course I'm not _sure_ of anything until I meet her, but I've known I was a lesbian since I was fourteen, so it'd be pretty fucked up for the universe to have set me up with a dude."

Alex looks less like crying now. She nods, a couple times, eyes still wide. "Yeah, sorry, that makes sense. I just wasn't thinking."

"It's fine," she lies. Alex makes a little face, and Maggie is more upset that she could have imagined but she can't help but laugh lightly at this woman across from her. God, this nerd.

"Really, you're fine," she tells her. And it's still a lie but she finds herself ready to say anything to make Alex less upset. "You're not the first to ask. Although…" Maggie trails off for a second, gathering herself.

Because Alex is really smart and really tough and she's been at the DEO for two and half years and that timeline really matches up with when Maggie started getting second-hand cracked ribs, and it really might be her. And Maggie doesn't want to make her cry, but she just has to know if it's her. So she pushes, just a little, just once more.

"Although what?"

"Although usually the girls who ask me that are the ones who are starting to hope that their ink was about a girl too."

And Alex sputters again. "Mine…I'm, I'm straight, Maggie."

"Yeah," Maggie says, waving that away again, shoving down how much that hurts to hear. If she had a nickel. "Yeah, I know, you've said. But…" she takes a breath. She owes it to herself to be sure.

The idea of her soulmate has kept her afloat through countless swamping waves these last seventeen years, and she's not quite ready to give up on her. Not just yet.

And, just maybe, she owes it to Alex too.

Because, just maybe, this person who has come to love aliens and is a scientist and might want to test every hypothesis – this woman who has already demonstrated that she contains more multitudes that anyone Maggie has ever met – could surprise her again.

Could love her back.

So she says it. "But, you sure about that? Cause I've met a number of girls who were definitely straight, until they met their very gay, very female soulmates. It happens."

Alex says nothing, just blinks again and again.

Maggie's heart shatters in her chest. "Sorry," she says after a long and very uncomfortable moment. "I didn't mean to make it weird. I'm just fucking with you, kinda."

But she isn't, and they both know it.

And her heart is breaking, and it's broken before, but this feels kind of like the first time.


	8. Rom-Coms, Memoirs, and Superfriends

After the conversation at the bar, Maggie avoids Alex for over a week. At first it's because she's pissed, then it's because she's doing her homework, and then it's because she's planning for battle.

* * *

On that first night, she comes home, right after that horrible conversation at the bar, and – not that she's proud of it – drinks herself into a stupor.

She'd told Alex that she was going to drink something hard and lose her cool when Molly had dumped her – and she certainly had – but tonight makes that night look positively PG. Tonight she nearly scuba dives into her bottle of bourbon and lets herself dig deep into pity and anger and her overwhelming need to stop feeling like this.

She finally stumbles to bed, still in her jeans, pleased that she's too drunk to do something stupid, like set her Revelations journal on fire or call Alex and beg her for something.

She spends the entire next day nursing a truly horrible hangover. She snaps at everyone at the station, drinks enough coffee that she can actually feel her stomach lining starting to erode, and mutters obscenities under her breath about how her aging body is letting her down, and if her soulmate is going to be fucking heterosexual than the very least the universe could do is give her a body that doesn't suffer from hangovers.

And that's all just made her feel worse, so she decides as she rides her bike home, her head still throbbing, that tonight is the end of her pity party. Tomorrow she'll pick up the pieces and start making plans. But for tonight, she'll wallow.

So she figures she might as well do it right.

So she orders herself a large greasy pizza from a large greasy chain, even though there's a perfectly good artisanal pizza place not too far way, and she eats it in bed, even though she has a perfectly good couch, and she watches a movie on her laptop, even though she has a perfectly good tv.

She tortures herself by watching the one almost-good lesbian soulmate rom-com (if you ignore their horrible outfits and the fact that literally everyone in the movie is white) from the mid-2000s.

And she's always been pissed about all the movies about "lesbians" that have them being interested in men or involved with men or cheating with men, because that's never been how Maggie's done the whole lesbian thing. Maggie's a gold star; she'd never needed to go on a mediocre date with a man or sleep with a man or marry a man to know that she liked girls.

She's just always known.

But she's halfway through her pity party and halfway through her pizza and halfway through her second beer when she starts watching the movie a little more closely.

Because one of the perky white women on the screen – the blonde – is super captivated by the other perky white woman – the brunette – even though the blonde is in the process of moving in with her boyfriend. That's how they meet, of course. The brunette works for the moving company that's doing the heavy lifting, so there are lots of gratuitous shots of arm muscles in tank tops and, oh yes, Maggie _does_ remember why she always liked this movie.

But so the blonde is moving in with her boyfriend and it isn't until she meets the hunky brunette with the (truly impressive) biceps that she starts to wonder.

Then there's this scene that Maggie's always hated – has, honestly thrown things at the tv during in the past – where the blonde pulls out her Revelations journal and re-reads all the clues out loud to herself and wonders if maybe she could have been getting Resonances of "woman feelings."

And Maggie's always hated it because "woman feelings" is such a stupid phrase and it makes no sense and _feelings don't have a gender_.

But tonight she puts in a pin in that anger and she really watches this girl on screen. Really watches her page through this journal and really watches as the realization starts to come over her face.

Really watches her rewind and replay her whole life, looking for something that should have been obvious but never was. Really watches her wonder, for the very first time, if she's been looking in the wrong place this whole time.

Really watches how scared she is. How upset she is. How nervous and confused she is. But, because Maggie's really watching, she also sees the wonder that comes over her face. Sees something that's wrapped up in fear now but will soon be pure excitement and awe.

And, of course, because this is the only almost-good lesbian rom-com, it _does_ turn out she's been looking in the wrong place. There are several more hijinks – and a coming out arc that feels so contrived and everyone is so weirdly supportive and it always makes Maggie cringe – but eventually they end up together.

And Maggie's always though the brunette was too forgiving, was too naïve, for just embracing the blonde and literally u-hauling with her. Maggie's always thought that the ending – that this would just work out for them – was unrealistic.

But she really watches it this time. She really watches the brunette decide to let herself be happy. She really watches as the blonde struggles to say it and the brunette just holds her and tells her that she gets it. She really watches as the brunette just assumes that everything will be okay.

And it's always felt a little shitty – this movie, this plot, this thing. This idea that the world didn't think there were enough people who'd want to see two out lesbians falling in love and finding their soulmates and both staying alive until the end of the movie, so they had to have this boyfriend thing.

But tonight it feels different. Tonight it feels hopeful, a little. Tonight it feels like maybe the blonde wasn't just poorly written but maybe she's just been a little lost her whole life. And like maybe the brunette isn't just naïve but is also optimistic and just wants to give herself her best chance to be happy.

And Maggie's known forever that the director is a lesbian, but she pulls her computer into her lap and she googles her and ends up in a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and what she finds knocks her on her ass.

She didn't just direct it. She wrote it.

And it's her story.

She's the brunette, and she fell for the blonde, and the blonde had a boyfriend and was straight but they're soulmates and, as far as Maggie can tell, they're still together.

Maggie closes her laptop and she eats one last slice and she drinks one last beer and she stares at her wall and her mind just whirrs and whirrs and whirrs.

* * *

The next day, after a slice of cold pizza for breakfast – a little hair of the dog – Maggie goes to the one place that she thinks can help. It's awkward, because she dated one of the co-owners and two of the employees within the last few years, but it's the only queer bookstore in National City and they make a mean chai latte and Maggie needs answers.

And the public library just doesn't have that much lesbian literature – she knows for a fact – so the bookshop is her only option.

So she walks in and she wanders the shelves for almost twenty minutes, hoping to remain unnoticed, but she can't find what she's looking for.

"Need any help?"

The voice is amused and Maggie rolls her eyes because she knows it's Jaq – she's a little hard to miss what with the flaming red hair and the fact that she's over six feet tall – and she knows that Jaq knows it's her.

"Hey, Jaq. Uh, long time no see."

Jaq raises an eyebrow. "If by 'long time no see' you mean it's been almost two years since we slept together and you never called, and over one year since you started dating my employee and left her ass in the dirt, then, yeah. Long time no see."

Maggie rolls her eyes again. She did honestly miss Jaq. "First of all," she says, holding up a finger, "you never called me either. And second of all, Amanda got back with her ex – while she and I were still dating, I might add – and you know it."

And Jaq cracks a grin. "Alright, detective, you've got me." Her grin changes a little. "You gonna press charges?"

And she's stepped closer and she's got that look on her face, and she was really quite excellent in bed, but Maggie just shakes her head, taking a small half-step back.

"Not this time," she says a little weakly, but it's enough. It's enough for Jaq to get the vibe and for Jaq to realize that something's up.

"What brings you in here, Mags? Thought this place was a little too haunted for you."

"I, uh…" Maggie scratches the back of her neck, completely unsure how to ask for what she needs. "Do you, um, I was looking around and I didn't find anything…but, you probably have, I mean, fuck, _someone_ has to have written it—"

But Jaq, mercifully, stops her uncharacteristic rambling. "Maggie," she says firmly, and she waits for Maggie to look her in the eye before she says it. "What are you looking for?"

Maggie takes in a deep breath and lets it out, long and hard.

She's going to say it out loud for the first time.

And she can't believe she's going to say it to Jaq, of all people, but it's now or never.

"I think I met my soulmate."

Jaq's jaw drops for a second before she pulls herself together. "That's—Mags, that's amazing!"

And Maggie hates herself because she's suddenly blinking back tears.

"Oh, no. That's…not amazing?" Jaq screws up her face. "What's wrong with her?"

Maggie shakes her head quickly, trying to swallow everything back down. "No, no. God, no. Nothing's wrong with her. She's…she's perfect. Except for, uh…"

"Except for what?"

And Maggie says it. "She's straight."

And Maggie's prepared for pity, but she's not prepared for Jaq to tip her head back and laugh.

"What! Jaq, it's not funny! It's fucking horrible."

"Oh, no, babe, I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh at you. I know, that sucks. But, Maggie, honestly, have you seen yourself? Who the fuck would want a man when they could have you?"

"Someone straight," Maggie deadpans. Flattering as it is, coming from a _lesbian_ , it isn't that encouraging.

"Well," Jaq says, looking around a little, "contrary to what straight people may believe, we don't actually have any books on straight-to-gay conversion here."

But Maggie shakes her head, letting the joke sail right past her. "No, I was looking for memoirs. Soulmate memoirs. I realize I've been a little…uh, _narrow_ , I guess, in imagining what it could be like. I was wondering if you have anything about someone, like…like that. Someone meeting a girl, you know, and realizing? Or, being that girl, who makes them realize? I'm just…I can't be the first one, right?"

And Jaq seems to understand because she shakes her head quickly. "Of course you're not. Let's try the back room."

And Jaq ends up finding three different memoirs for Maggie and she gives them to her free of charge and treats her to chai latte and sits with her and jokes with her and pages through the books with her, and Maggie wonders, for the first time in days, if this could maybe work out okay.

If maybe Alex can love her back, even though she's never loved a girl before.

* * *

This whole time Maggie's barely noticed what's been Resonating because she's been so upset. But, as she starts to get herself under control, she slowly realizes that she's been getting a lot of worry and a ton of confusion ever since that night at the bar.

And, if it is Alex, that makes sense.

Because Maggie had pushed her and prodded her and forced her to wonder and that's scary and that's confusing.

Especially if she could maybe be starting to like Maggie back.

And then, two days after the bookshop, when Maggie is home alone, standing in front of her stove trying to recreate that chai latte during a reading break, she feels a burst of relief soar through the bond.

And Maggie wonders, as hard as she ever has, what just happened.

She wonders if, just maybe, Alex is starting to learn something new about herself. If, just maybe, Alex is changing.

If it is Alex, and _please let it be Alex_ , all of this – these Resonances and Alex thinking that she's straight and her not mentioning any of the ways the two of them align – kind of explains some things. It could explain the terrible sex she's Resonated for years, for starters, if she isn't bi or pan or interested in men at all. It could explain why she didn't react to Nebraska or the letter M, if she's been looking for a man this whole time.

And even though Maggie's reading has shown her that this is possible – that this can work, that women like Alex have learned to love women like her – she's still worried. She's been the first step out of the closet for a lot of women, and none of them were her soulmate but all of them ended up hopping right back in the closet, or hopping right over Maggie to the next girl as soon as their eyes had adjusted to the sunlight.

Maggie has always lived her life by the rules she's created for herself, and this is one that – up until now – she's taken so seriously. No newbies. No straight girls. She had thought anything else was naïve or unrealistic or temporary.

But looking at Alex's face and hearing Alex's laugh and feeling that burst of relief kind of changes everything for her.

She had never expected herself to embrace someone like this. To want someone like this. To reach out for someone like this and beg her to stay.

But, for Alex? For her soulmate? Maggie will break every fucking rule she's ever had.

* * *

Maggie, vague plans firmly in place and hangover a distant memory, finally stops avoiding Alex. She sends a text, apologizing for being unavailable and asking Alex for a round of pool the next night.

And she'd been worried that Alex would be upset that they hadn't seen each other in so long, or would be upset about the conversation the other night, but Alex texts back immediately.

 _Tomorrow night_ , she says. _Bring your wallet cause_ _loser buys_. And Maggie always loses and Maggie hates to lose, but she can't wait.

* * *

Alex seems different. Looser, more relaxed.

Her sister calls her while they're playing pool, and pressures Alex to invite Maggie out for a drink with all of their friends.

Maggie doesn't do meeting the big group of friends. Not since Emily and her terrible group of architects. She says it's because she likes her own time and space, but it's really that the idea terrifies her. She hates feeling like she has to prove herself to other people. She doesn't like walking into any room at a disadvantage, and facing down a group of people who are there literally just to decide if she's good enough – hot enough, nice enough, cool enough – is one of the biggest disadvantages she can imagine.

And then the disadvantage gets even worse because Maggie often doesn't make great first impressions, she knows that. She can come off as disinterested or standoffish but it's just because she's just not in the habit of sharing personal and vulnerable things about herself. Not ever, and especially not with strangers.

So, no, Maggie doesn't do meeting the friends, not in a group.

She'd had a ton of friends in college, but after she'd blown up her relationship with Emily, she'd realized that most of them were a little more Emily's friends than her friends – or, at least, that they'd sided with Emily after Maggie had cheated. Or they had just been fans, people who followed her around and wanted to be near her because she was college famous. And those types of bonds had faded the second she'd moved to National City.

So she has a couple real friends from Tampa that she's still close with who all live on the east coast, and a couple friends from the station, and a couple from other things, but it's hard to make friends as an adult (especially when you're obsessed with work), so she never really has her own big group of friends to introduce someone to.

So she wants to say no. But then Alex gives her the cutest little pout, her eyes big and soft, and her body so close to Maggie's, and she's just so fucking beautiful and sweet and ridiculous, and even if she isn't her soulmate, Maggie's a total goner for her.

So she says yes.

She's terrified. But she's also nearly giddy, because Alex is inviting her into her life. And she desperately wants to be deep in Alex's life.

Alex has become important to her, soulmate or no, in ways that continue to completely knock her on her ass. She doesn't want to imagine her life without Alex in it, whether her ink was about Alex or not. And it kind of seems like Alex might feel the same way, even if she's still thinking that she's straight. It kind of seems like Alex might want to pull Maggie in from the sidelines of her life and put her in the starting lineup. And Maggie hasn't felt like a starter in anyone else's life in a really long time.

And god, she just wants to knock this out of the park.

* * *

So she's nervous and scared but she's happy, that Thursday. She puts on her best jeans and her favorite jacket and her tallest boots – because it's hard to hear people in bars, sometimes, when you're short – and she tries to walk in with confidence.

Alex's sister is adorable, and her friends are sweet. And Alex is, as always, completely and utterly breathtaking.

Maggie buys them a round, and things get a little awkward between James and Kara for moment, and Maggie hopes she didn't cause any trouble. Alex looks over at her reassuringly, and Maggie just wants to lay her head down on Alex's shoulder and close her eyes and let everything else just wash over her.

But, of course, she can't. They start talking about soulmates, and Winn makes a joke about how pathetic they all are to still be searching, and Maggie notices that both Alex and Kara get a little weird.

James asks Alex if she's done research on soulmates, and Maggie knows that Alex is a doctor of bioengineering and did a couple years of medical school and it seems impossible to describe her without the word brilliant.

And then it happens.

Kara announces, seemingly without a thought, that Alex felt a Resonance before her soulbond opened when she was sixteen.

Everyone turns to gape at Alex, forcing her to nervously say that it was back when she was just twelve years old.

When Alex was just twelve, Maggie was fourteen.

When Alex was just twelve, Maggie was kicked out of her home.

When Alex was just twelve, Maggie lost her entire life.

Alex gets really awkward, stuttering and slipping, carefully avoiding sharing any details, clearly not realizing that she already said the only detail that could possibly matter.

"I wasn't really sure what it was," she stutters, "because I was so young. And it was pretty faint, but it was definitely…something, uh serious." She refuses to look over at Maggie. "It must have been something…something really bad, or, just…intense, for them, for me to feel it back then."

She was just twelve, and Maggie was just fourteen, and it was Valentine's Day, when Maggie came home to find her love note clutched in her father's hand, pristine little yellow envelope crinkling under the force of his grip.

And even though Maggie's been wondering for weeks and weeks now if it's Alex, she sort of can't believe it.

It's Alex.

It's fucking **_Alex_**.

Her soulmate is fucking Dr. Alexandra Danvers, special agent, second in command of a secret federal agency, who single-handedly killed a Hellgrammite and flew a fucking ship into space to save Supergirl, and broke Maggie's mind free of Myriad with the force of her feelings.

Her soulmate is the most incredible person she has ever met.

Her soulmate is the most beautiful person she's ever seen.

Her soulmate is Alex fucking Danvers, and she's sitting right there, close enough to touch, and Maggie wonders if it's a federal crime that Alex's lips keep caressing her beer bottle instead of Maggie.

Maggie can barely breathe. She can barely think. And yes, it's complicated, and no, Alex hasn't said anything about liking girls since that night, and yes this could all still end terribly. But all of that fades to the background for a moment – just meaningless noise – because the only thing that matters is that her soulmate is _right there_. Her soulmate is _right there_ and she's incredible and she makes Maggie feel better and more whole and more alive than she ever has in her life.

Maggie had hoped, and wished, and pleaded, but she'd never actually thought that her soulmate would be someone wonderful. Not since her parents had kicked her out, anyway, and not since she'd cheated on Emily. She sort of thought she might be one of those people who never found her soulmate, and if she did? Well.

There are a lot of bad people in the world and most of them have soulmates just like anyone else – disappointing people and selfish people and cruel people and truly evil people.

She had sort of thought, even though she knew her soulmate was brilliant and burdened and loved to surf, that she would turn out to be a kind of a bad person.

She'd never have admitted it to anyone, but she had been convinced – since her parents kicked her out, since Emily – that she didn't deserve someone wonderful. That she didn't deserve someone brilliant and strong and caring. That she didn't deserve to ever be loved, not like that.

But it's _Alex_ , and Alex is brilliant and kind and strong and funny and so completely loving and gentle. Everyone that Maggie's ever dated, everyone she's thought that she deserves, has been hard, has been a little cold, has played games, has held a part of themselves away.

But Alex is so pure, so open with her. Alex doesn't play games with her, doesn't test her, doesn't set her up to fail. Alex treats her like she deserves happiness, like she deserves love and care and compassion. Like she isn't broken, like she isn't dangerous. Like she isn't afraid of Maggie breaking her.

Alex is strong and tough and beautiful, and Maggie cannot possibly handle how much she feels for her.

Lost in her own heart, Maggie doesn't even realize what's happening until Kara starts to say her favorite animal, and it all comes crashing back, the background noise of everything that isn't just _Alex_ throttling itself up to a deafening roar.

This isn't how she'd hoped it would happen – in a really brightly lit bar surrounded by upbeat strangers when she has no idea if Alex might like girls – but it's okay. She _knows_ now, and she needs Alex to know too. She really doesn't think Alex knows – yes, she's been weird about the topic, and yes, she refused to make eye contact just now when she was talking about her early Resonance – but she's never mentioned Nebraska and she hasn't brought it up, and she probably still thinks she's straight.

Alex doesn't know, but she needs to.

She hopes Alex isn't disappointed.

She's terrified Alex will be disappointed.

She hopes Alex is gay enough to say yes to her.

She hopes Alex doesn't kick her out of her life. For being a woman, for being damaged, for being obsessed with work.

Alex could destroy her, so easily.

Kara's favorite animal was a moose. She gives Alex this little look when she says it, and it tickles something in the back of Maggie's brain, but she's completely on fire right now, so she brushes it aside.

Alex is next in the circle. Alex is going to go next, and she's going to say snakes, and Maggie hopes she manages to say sharks before she passes out.

"Ladies first." Maggie's head snaps up. That was Alex. She's gesturing to James, telling him to go first.

Okay so, fine, her soulmate is also a strategic mastermind. That's not news, but Maggie's still impressed. She's sent the circle the other way, so Maggie will have to say sharks before Alex says snakes.

Okay, fine.

Then they'll both know.

Maggie waits, barely breathing, while they argue about James' favorite of bears (she can't believe the boys don't trust Alex's brain, immediately and without question. Fucking idiots) and talk about Winn's favorite Koko the gorilla.

They all try to guess what Maggie's animal was ("Cheetah!" Winn says, practically bouncing off his seat. "No! Jaguar! No! Panther!"), and it's sweet, it really is. If Maggie weren't literally dying, she'd spare a moment to appreciate how generous they're being with her, how hard they're working to include her.

How much they must know she means to Alex.

But her heart is going to explode and she hasn't taken a breath in about ten minutes, so she stops their game.

"Well, as flattered as I am that you think I was the type of kid to be into large predatory cats, unfortunately I wasn't that sophisticated." She takes a half a beat pause, and Alex won't even look over at her.

She gathers all of the courage she's ever had, and she lays her heart right out on the table. "I was a hardcore tomboy and not super subtle," she gives a small little self deprecating laugh before shrugging, "so I liked sharks."

Alex twitches, like she's going to topple over.

Kara _does_ topple over, right onto the floor.

It's _Alex fucking Danvers_ , and all three of them know it.

Alex _knows_.

And Alex is going to go next, and she's going to say snakes, and Maggie's going to pull her outside, and – god willing – kiss her to within an inch of her sanity, and never let go of her for as long as she lives.

But Alex's phone rings, and she answers, and she genuinely seems to panic at what she hears. She and Winn go to sprint of the room, but she spares two long seconds to look at Maggie. "Mag – I'm…I'm sorry, I have to go."

And Maggie just sits there for another couple of minutes before she takes her first shaky breath in.

And Kara is looking at her like she can see right through her.


	9. Final Revelation

After a few moments, Maggie excuses herself and leaves the bar. She knows the polite thing to do would have been to stay, to get to know Kara and James better. She likes Kara, and, god, if Kara is Alex's sister, and Alex is Maggie's soulmate, then…jesus, no, she can't think like that yet. And James seems genuinely nice, and Maggie thinks she'll probably come to really like him.

But, just now, no. No. She can't stay there and make idle chit-chat and play more get-to-know-you games with them when her entire life is on fire.

All she can think about is Alex. She has to see Alex, she has to talk to Alex, she has to touch Alex.

She needs Alex to know, too.

She isn't sure she'll be able to breathe until Alex knows too.

It scares her, this visceral urge to immediately confess, to tell Alex this instant. It scares her, as she gets on her bike and rides to the station, and as she boots up her computer, and as she looks up Alex's address, and as she gets back on her bike, and as she rides to Alex's apartment, and as she knocks just in case Alex had faked the call or fixed it so quickly, and as she presses her back against the door, and as she slides her body down, settling on the floor to wait.

It scares her because she's never been the type to share her feelings, especially not when they're so new and hot. She's always played things close to the vest, she's always kept things close to herself – the bigger and more tender, the closer she's held them.

So it scares her that she genuinely feels like she's going to die if she doesn't share this with Alex, immediately and fully. She wishes she could go home and process and figure out a plan for how to tell Alex without spooking her. A plan for figuring out if Alex likes girls. A plan for making Alex realize it for herself, just in case she's still too blinded by heterosexuality to have gotten it from Nebraska and M and girls and abomination and sharks.

A plan for how to play this cool. A plan for how to protect herself if this goes badly. A plan for how to keep some of the power – to not just hand her entire soul to Alex and just pray that Alex could one day love her back.

A plan for if Alex isn't gay enough to love her back, not like that.

A plan for if Alex had believed abomination. For if Alex, somewhere inside of herself, still believes abomination.

But she can't.

She can't, and that terrifies her.

She can't leave. She can't wait. She can't plan, she can't play it cool, she can't hold herself back.

All she can do is sit here on the floor and lean against Alex's door and wait for her to come home.

* * *

She sits for hours. She has to get up a couple times and do laps of the hallway because her legs and butt keep getting numb, but she always returns to her spot, settling against the smooth gray wood of the door, her legs either drawn up to her chest or crossed underneath her body or spread out long in front of her.

She traces the pattern in the carpet with her fingertips until she could recreate it from memory.

But finally, after what feels like months, she hears the stairway door open from around the corner. And the elevator has dinged many times while she's been here and the stairway door has opened a couple times, but Maggie just knows that this time it's Alex.

She's right.

Alex turns the corner and she sees her and she stops short, just a few feet away.

Maggie heaves herself to her feet, and wishes she'd done a lap of the hallway more recently. She isn't sure if it was the long hours of sitting that are making her legs wobble, or if it's the knowledge of what's about to happen. Or if it's just seeing Alex, windswept and exhausted and beautiful. And _hers_.

Maggie's spent a lot of her time on the floor wondering how Alex will react to seeing her. If, now that Maggie's said sharks, she knows.

"Mag," Alex says, and her voice cracks but she obviously tries to ignore it. "What are you doing here?"

Okay, then. Alex is going to try to play it cool, like sharks didn't happen. Like a Resonance at age twelve didn't happen. Like Kara didn't fall off her chair.

But her voice cracked. She has to know. She _knows_.

It's cute, in a way, her pretending, but Maggie is not having it. Maggie's on fire – she has been for hours. Alex is cute and Alex is avoiding but Maggie is dying.

"We need to talk," she manages to say without crying or flinging herself at Alex.

"It's late," Alex says, like that matters. "Maybe we can try tomorrow?"

And Maggie's already been waiting on this floor for her for hours, and she's been waiting to be loved by someone since she was fourteen, and she's been waiting to meet her soulmate since she was five years old, and she's pretty sure she's waited long enough.

Alex is adorable and Alex is scared and Alex is avoiding but Maggie is _hers_ and she can't wait another fucking second to know if Alex wants her back.

So she settles her body, flexing her muscles under her jacket and stacking her bones on top of each other. She stands her ground. "No. Not tomorrow, not next week. Tonight, Alex. Right now."

Alex gives the smallest little nod, and Maggie just wants to reach out and touch her hair and hold her and whisper that it's all going to be okay.

Alex unlocks the door and they walk inside. Alex tries to change the subject again ("How did you find out my address?"), but Maggie didn't sit in that hallway for hours to talk about anything other than the fact that her entire self belongs to Alex.

She shuts it down immediately. "I'm a detective, Danvers," she deadpans, clearly brushing it off. "I detect."

Alex doesn't say anything else, and Maggie had spent hours on the carpeted floor, but has no idea where to start.

"Alex," is all she can manage.

She's inside Alex's apartment, and they're alone together in private for the first time ever, and they're both still wearing their jackets and it doesn't really feel intimate but it's also the most intimate thing that's ever happened.

This woman is standing in front of her and she's strong and powerful and sweet and brilliant and gorgeous and Maggie's pretty sure she already loves her and she's definitely Maggie's best shot at being loved.

Even if she's never loved a girl before.

And she'd almost fallen off her chair at the bar, and Kara _had_ fallen off her chair, and she knows. She _knows_ , Alex _knows_ , and Maggie is done dancing around this. She's been wondering for weeks and weeks – since the first second she'd laid eyes on Alex, squinting in the sunshine on that tarmac, her suit crisp and her hair blowing in the wind – if Alex's ink had been about her.

And it had – _it had_ – and they both know it.

Maggie just opens her mouth and lets it fall out. "I need to hear you say it."

Alex just blinks.

Maggie knows she isn't making sense – there are so _many_ things she needs to hear Alex say – but it feels like her brain is mush, like it's just throbbing to the rhythm of Alex's name, and she can barely form words.

She's never been more terrified in her life. She's never been more vulnerable. She's spent every year of her life since she was fourteen cowering under the deafening roar of fear that no one would ever really love her back. But how much she needs Alex to be able to love her back – to love her like _this_ , hot and molten and fierce – mutes all of that other need, fading it into complete silence.

Now it's just _Alex_ , screaming in her ears and thudding in her brain and thundering in her chest. She just needs Alex.

So she says the only thing that feels true. "I _know_ , Alex, I _know_ it's you. I _know_ it is. I can feel it, Alex, when I look at you, when I think about you. I _know_ it's you."

Alex still doesn't say anything, and it slices into Maggie, hot and jagged, that her worst fears may be coming true. That Alex might not believe her. That Alex might be too straight to believe her. That she might be too damaged and unloveable for Alex to believe her. That she might be not just a woman but also an abomination and that Alex will never be hers, not like that.

She feels herself getting desperate, feels herself clutching frantically for anything she has. She can't let this slip through her fingers. This is her _soulmate_. Alex's life has painted itself on her skin since she was five years old. It's _Alex_. All her Revelations – the good and the bad – they were all about Alex.

And, _fuck_ , Alex's were about her.

She holds up a hand and starts ticking off her fingers. "You're Alex," one finger.

"And you're from California," a second finger.

Her voice starts to shake. Alex has to believe her. She has to. She has to know and she has to believe her and she has to take the leap and try to love her. She _has_ to. "And you're a huge fucking nerd and there is a god damned surfboard in that corner," a third finger. _And I became a scientist because of you._

She blinks back her tears, just trying to get through this. "And I've seen you, you're such an overachiever and you're so desperate for approval, and I _know_ you're afraid of failure." A fourth finger. _And I've never been more afraid of a girl in my life_.

"And you're a fucking doctor doctor special agent and tonight you fixed a satellite and you're just stupidly brilliant, Alex," a fifth finger. _And I'm an abomination but I'm begging you to love me anyway_.

"And you have the fucking weight of the world on your shoulders and you're constantly throwing yourself into danger like you're the only one who can save everyone and I fucking bet that you'd like to be able to take a weekend off, to be relieved for just a hot minute, to feel less responsible, Alex, I _know_ that," a sixth finger. _Please love me back_. _Please, be the one I get to love_.

But Alex still hasn't said anything.

She still hasn't said a word.

Maggie has just told her – just told her everything – and she hasn't said anything.

And Maggie doesn't know if it's because she's a girl or because she's damaged or because she's an abomination or because she doesn't believe it or because maybe Alex is in love with Supergirl or because she's trying to figure out how to let Maggie down gently.

But she knows that it's killing her.

When she was fourteen she had desperately wanted her father to take her back. And tonight she desperately wants Alex to want her. Nothing else in her life has even come close.

She tries to control herself but she points a finger at Alex and it shakes.

"And when you were fifteen, I was seventeen, and the bond was open for me, and I felt anguish and grief and horrible guilt and I _know_ that was when your dad died, I _know_ it was."

Alex takes in a sharp breath and wraps her arms around herself, closing herself off even more, but doesn't say anything.

She still hasn't said a single fucking thing. Maggie is ripping herself open and Alex is just watching. And maybe it's masochistic and maybe it's a mistake, but Maggie has never been able to keep herself back from Alex.

So she takes every scrap of herself that she's ever hidden away and she holds it out to Alex, looking right into her eyes, letting herself cry and letting herself talk about the thing she never talks about.

When Alex was just twelve, Maggie was fourteen, and her life was destroyed and Alex felt Maggie's heartbreak inside her own body.

"And when you were twelve you felt something and I _know_ , I _know_ what it was. I was fourteen, and I bet it was Valentine's Day, wasn't it, when you felt it?"

Alex finally makes a little sound, and the tiny part of Maggie's brain that isn't on fire wonders if maybe she should have started with the hard data.

"And that was the worst day of my life—and I'll tell you about it, I swear, because I _know_ it's you, Alex—but you felt it." Maggie grasps at her own chest, and says the most true thing she knows. "You felt _me_ , Ally, I _know_ you did."

And Alex, finally, finally, nods.

But she still doesn't say anything.

She doesn't say yes or no, she doesn't say I love you or get out, she doesn't say I'm straight or I want you anyway, she doesn't say you're an abomination or you deserve to be happy with me.

But she's started to cry.

Maggie's out of data. She's out of evidence. She's just handed Alex every inch of herself. She's just shown Alex all of the pieces of herself that Alex has always had, and Alex isn't saying a single word – she's just silently breathing and crying and holding onto herself.

Maggie can feel her entire body cracking apart – it's _awful_ – but she gathers her courage and, one last time, asks it again.

"But I just…Ally I _know_ it's you, but I need to hear you say it. Just say it, Alex, just tell me." Maggie closes her eyes, screwing them shut as tightly as she can while she asks it. "What was your animal, Alex?"

And she means _do you think you could love me back_ and she means _will I ever get to be happy with you_ and she means _I've wanted you for my entire life_ , but she can't find any of those words. She just…god. Tonight she said "sharks" and Kara fell off her chair and now she needs Alex to say "snakes." She needs it. She needs them both to know.

And there's a long moment, and Maggie starts to completely shatter. But then Alex's voice, hoarse and cracking and raw, comes to her in a rough whisper. Maggie snaps her eyes open. Good or bad, she has to watch it happen.

"When I was young, I had this book of Shel Silverstein poems, and my dad would read them to me before bed."

Maggie chokes back a little sound because she had that book too and there's that poem about the snake in it, slowly swallowing up that kid. She wraps her arms around herself, trying to knit herself together, trying not to feel like she's the one being devoured.

"And my favorite," Alex says haltingly, "my favorite poem was…"

"Say it," Maggie begs. "I need to hear you say it."

"My favorite was about the boa constrictor."

And Maggie's spent her entire life thinking about the word "snakes" but fucking of course, even five-year-old Alex Danvers is more scientifically accurate than that.

And she _knows_ , she's known for hours, but hearing Alex say it is a completely different thing.

Hearing Alex say out loud that the snake – the _boa constrictor_ – that coiled and twisted around her arm on her fifth birthday was because of _her_ , somehow both creates a million fissures in Maggie's body and also gathers all of her back together.

It's Alex.

Maggie drops her head into her hands, her entire body trembling with adrenaline and fear and a truckload of hope that's careening faster and faster towards its expiration date. She's still so fucking scared. She's so scared of this – of Alex, of herself, of what this all means. Because Alex said snakes – said _boa constrictor_ – but she still hasn't said anything about being gay or about liking Maggie or about wanting Maggie.

Alex has been staring and stuttering but she hasn't been happy.

And god, Maggie just wants her so much.

" _Jesus_ _christ_ _, Danvers_ ," she whispers, pressing her hands into her eyes and trying to keep herself from breaking into thousands of tiny unwanted pieces. " _Jesus_ _ **fucking**_ _christ_."

There's another long pause, and Maggie doesn't know if she's going to survive this. Just the thought of turning around and walking out of this apartment, with its soft grays and muted lighting, is enough to devastate her.

How is she supposed to live without being wanted by Alex Danvers? When, for their entire lives, they were destined for each other? Is she so fucking unloveable that even her soulmate can't want her back? Was this really what she was destined for? The most incredible person she's ever met, who can't even love her back?

She's completely destroyed and she's just a split second away from completely annihilation, when Alex says it, her voice cautious and tentative.

"Did you…did you know that boa constrictors can grow to be thirteen feet long?"

Maggie looks up at her, confused and terrified and broken and desperately in love.

"And that they—" her voice hitches a little, "they can swim? And they give birth to live babies? Like mammals?"

And she hasn't smiled and she hasn't said that she's gay and she hasn't said that Maggie is wantable and she hasn't said that she's happy, but she's sharing the science. And, even though she's an instant away from dissolving in agony, Maggie thinks that, just maybe, that's how Alex Danvers tells you that she's happy to be with you.

And Maggie still doesn't know if she's wanted back. But she knows that what Alex just did, how her tiny little voice shared the things that made her love boa constrictors when she was just five years old – how her voice had just cracked, how she's crying a little bit too, how fucking soft and sweet and nerdy she is – Maggie knows that she loves Alex even more now than she did twenty seconds ago.

Her brilliant, nerdy, bold, beautiful, devastatingly powerful, terrifyingly soft girl.

And that's so overwhelming that Maggie doesn't stop herself from saying the only thing she can. The only thing she can even think anymore.

" ** _Fuck_** , Alex," she chokes out, trying to wipe off her tears, trying to control herself at all. "I've been waiting for you for so _fucking_ long."

And Maggie has been brave all night, but, finally, _finally_ , Alex is too.

She steps forward and she puts her hands on Maggie's body and she pulls Maggie into herself, tight and hard and possessive.

Maggie can't stop the sob that tears itself out of her.

She's never felt anything like this before. God, Alex is warm and firm and soft and she smells so good and she's holding Maggie like she has to, like if she lets go she'll completely disintegrate, and Maggie has never wanted to be held so tightly ever before in her entire life.

But Alex still hasn't said it.

She still doesn't know if Alex wants her back. Not for sure.

She still doesn't know if Alex cares that Maggie's an abomination or not.

She still doesn't know if Alex is hugging her because she loves her as a friend or if she could love her in the way Maggie wants her to. Hot, fierce, molten.

"Too long, Mags," Alex breathes into her ear, and Maggie doesn't understand.

But then Alex says it. "I've been waiting too long for you, too. But I'm here now."

And Maggie cracks open, just like she'd feared, but before she can shatter Alex is pouring into her, holding her steady, filling up all the places that have always ached with loneliness.

And Maggie just drops her head into Alex's neck and lets herself cry.

Because Alex has been waiting for her, too.

* * *

Maggie just stands there for a long time and lets Alex hold her and tries to convince herself, over and over, that Alex wants her back. That Alex wants her, like this. Hot and fierce and molten and positively singing.

That Alex is here now.

Alex is here now, is holding her so hard and softly kissing the side of her head like Maggie is exactly what she wants – exactly _who_ she wants.

Alex is here now, and she's been waiting for Maggie just like Maggie's been waiting for her.

And Alex still hasn't said if she's gay or if she's happy, but she's here now and she's holding onto Maggie for dear life, and so, almost in slow motion, Maggie pries her arms off of her own body and does the most vulnerable thing she's done since she was fourteen years old.

She slips her own arms around Alex and holds her back, as tightly as she can.

And Alex just clutches her, just _digs_ her fingers into Maggie's body, and Maggie doesn't know if Alex realizes it but she's whispering, her head bent down to press hard against Maggie's. "Maggie," she whispers, over and over again.

And then, accompanied by a tightening of her arms and a breath of warm air against Maggie's hair, " ** _my_** Maggie."

And the iciest, most terrified parts of her drain out and vanish onto the floor because Alex wants her back.

Hot and molten and fierce and true.

Alex wants her back.

Alex is hers.

And _god_ , is she Alex's.

* * *

After a couple of moments, Alex shifts her hold on Maggie, tightening her already superhuman grip, and she starts to talk. Maggie's head is still nestled in her neck, and Alex dips her own head down and to the side so she can press her mouth directly against Maggie's hair.

"I can't believe it's you," she whispers.

Maggie feels the vibrations of Alex's words on her own head, through her hair. Can feel the heat of Alex's mouth against her.

"I didn't know it could feel like this," Alex says, her voice full of wonder, her arms so strong.

Alex nuzzles herself impossibly closer, and she finally says the one thing that really and truly gets through to Maggie. "I can't believe I get to be yours."

Maggie shudders. Alex wants her. Alex wants to belong to her in exactly the way Maggie is desperate for.

Alex wants to belong to her.

Alex holds her even tighter. Alex wants to be hers. Maggie is a girl and is damaged and unloveable and might not deserve to be happy, but Alex wants to be hers.

Alex doesn't care that she's not a man.

Alex doesn't care about the sixth, about abomination.

Alex is her soulmate, and Alex wants to be with her.

And Maggie's pretty sure she's been clear about what she wants, but just in case, she lets herself say a truth so fundamental, so obviously true, that she'd barely seen it for years and years. Something like _I can feel_ _gravity_ and _I breathe oxygen_ and _get me the hell out of Nebraska_.

"I've always been yours," Maggie whispers, her lips just brushing Alex's skin. "I've _always_."


	10. Sanvers

They stay, standing, holding each other, for a long time. Maggie's legs start to hurt – they've been through a lot tonight, and she's still wearing her boots with the tallest heel. She wants to move to the couch, but she doesn't trust herself.

Her rule is always that when she wants something this badly, this late at night, she has to walk away and go to sleep. If she still wants it in the morning, she'll go for it and she won't let anything stop her. But after Emily, after that aggressive woman who looked just like a grown-up version of Eliza Wilke, she doesn't trust her late-night judgment anymore. Not when she's emotional. Not when she wants so desperately.

And she knows, she _knows_ that Alex isn't a mistake, but she's not going to give herself a chance to mess this up so soon. So, still standing within the protection of Alex's arms, she tells Alex that they need to be careful and go slowly, that she has to leave, that she'll come back tomorrow, that they'll talk tomorrow – she says it and she means it, even though she can barely stand the idea of not having Alex under her fingertips for even a minute.

Alex nods but doesn't let go, and Maggie loves her for it.

Maggie pulls back slowly, not to go, not right away, but because she's a little worried that this might all be a dream. That if she doesn't look Alex in the eyes, if she doesn't kiss her, if she doesn't touch her hair and her cheek and her neck, that she might wake up in the morning and wonder if this was real.

"It's important to me that we go slow," she hears herself say, "that we do this right."

She swallows, and reaches up to tuck Alex's hair behind her ear. Her hair is so soft and thin, and she's been awake for so long that almost all the curl has fallen out of it, and it's the most beautiful thing Maggie has ever touched.

Her voice cracks a little, as how much she wants this woman rolls over her again. But she's almost died on the job before, and she could die on the job tomorrow, and she's going to be careful with this, to give Alex time for this, but she refuses to die or to sleep or to go back into that hallway without knowing what it feels like to kiss her soulmate.

"But life is too short, and I have waited thirty-one fucking years for this, Ally, and I can't wait another single minute to know what it's like to kiss you." She can't help but smile. "I wanna go slow, we're gonna go slow, but I just…I want to kiss you."

And she doesn't even have time to worry that Alex might not want that too – that Alex might be happy to be hers but not be ready to kiss her – because Alex is nodding _yes_ before she even finishes talking, and she's nodding so hard and so fast that Maggie's worried she's going to injure herself.

Alex _wants_ her.

Maggie reaches up and takes Alex's face in her hands, and pulls her in. And it takes Alex a second to respond, but then she does, and she's kissing Maggie back. And her lips are so soft and Maggie's thumbs slide across her cheeks and she can feel her own heart stuttering and her veins expanding and it's like every dark place in her body is filling with light. Maggie's kissed a lot of women, and she's imagined this moment a million times, but nothing in the world could have prepared her for the feeling her soulmate's lips against hers, for the warm softness of Alex under her fingers and in her mouth. For Alex's hand coming up to hold her in place, her lips opening gently under Maggie's, her body still pressed as close as possible.

Maggie meant to just kiss her once but she can't help herself, starting a second kiss before the first even ends, reaching closer, slipping her hand down to Alex's neck, pulling her in, her fingers running across the baby hairs at the nape of Alex's neck. Her nose is pressed gently against Alex's cheek and she can smell her skin, and Alex's lips are wet and velvety and eager under her.

Maggie finally pulls back – not because she wants to but because she has to now or she never will – but Alex stops her, squeezing her arm. She's looking at Maggie with this incredible combination of reverence and disbelief and joy and it's all Maggie's ever wanted.

"My beautiful girl," Alex whispers to her, before running her fingers through Maggie's hair.

And Alex pulls her back in for another kiss, and, _oh,_ _ **that's**_ all she's ever wanted.

* * *

Maggie doesn't remember the ride home. She doesn't remember changing into her pajamas, or brushing her teeth, or setting an alarm, or checking to make sure her door is locked.

She remembers taking her Revelations journal out from where she keeps it, in the furthest corner of her closet, wrapped in her old softball jersey. She remembers taking it with her into bed, and opening it up, and writing just one word in it before she falls asleep, cradling it in her arms.

"Alex."

In the morning, she writes more. She spends a long time writing everything she feels – everything that happened, everything that scares her and everything that makes her happy. Because she doesn't really have anyone to call or to tell – she'll call Coach Randall later and she'll tell Tonio eventually and she'll tell her friends at some point soon – but there's no one in her life close enough to tell this morning.

So she writes it down, because she can't think about anything else and she never wants to forget how last night felt – how it felt to have Alex hold her, to kiss Alex, to touch her soulmate and whisper tender words and know that they're reciprocated.

To feel more whole than she has, ever, in her entire life.

* * *

Maggie comes back to Alex's apartment, as promised, the next afternoon. She had said "afternoon," but the latest she can wait is 12:30.

She's looking down at the carpet, marveling at how different she is from when she'd been sitting in the hallway last night – when she'd been aimlessly and nervously tracing the pattern with her fingers – when Alex opens the door.

Alex is grinning at her, and she's wearing jeans and a soft gray sweater, and she's so impossibly beautiful that Maggie can barely breathe. She feels small and brown and insignificant as she hands Alex the bag of food, but Alex just drops it on the floor and pulls Maggie into her body.

Maggie feels Alex positively melt against her, and she wonders, for what feels like the first time, if maybe this is going to work.

"I missed you," Alex murmurs to her.

Maggie's arms are up around Alex's shoulders, and she resists the urge to climb up Alex like a jungle gym. Later, she hopes.

She grips Alex's neck with one hand. She turns her head and kisses Alex right on the hinge of her jaw.

"I missed you too," she says, eyes closed, forehead pressed against Alex's cheek.

Alex leads them to the couch and they sit and eat and they talk about work and it's surprisingly easy. Maggie can't quite believe it's this simple, this relaxing, this effortless. That she gets to be with someone who will hold a burrito with one hand and gesticulate about the toxic venom she's analyzing with the other, and who will, every once in a while, put down the burrito to take Maggie's hand or lean over to kiss her on the cheek. Someone who will ask detailed questions about the slow process of getting issued a new service weapon while looking at her like she's the most beautiful woman in the galaxy.

After they eat, Alex starts to talk. She tells Maggie about what it was like grow up in Midvale, in the big house by the ocean. She tells her about being an only child, about her parents, about the pressure she felt to succeed. She tells her about the librarians who'd loved her. She tells her about what it was like when Kara came to live with them when she was fourteen, and the way she phrases things are really strange, and Maggie's brain has been pretty occupied lately, but it starts to stir again, to detect.

She tells her about how her dad had died when she was fifteen, and how her mom had changed. How she'd stopped believing in soulmates for a long time, convinced that finding your person wasn't a guarantee of a happy ending or a good life or even basic happiness. She tells her that she hadn't been looking for her soulmate, not at all, until last year. But she's careful to squeeze Maggie's hand when she says it, and she's careful to smile and she blushes a little as she says, firmly and clearly, that she's happy. That this is better than she'd ever dreamed. That if she'd known it would feel like this, she'd have torn the world apart looking for Maggie.

And Maggie has been desperate and searching since she was fourteen, but that all makes so much sense, and it's so _Alex_ , that Maggie nearly wants to cry. She's never had someone who would tear the world apart for her. She's never even had anyone who would tear the town or the campus apart for her.

But, it kind of seems like now she does.

And god, that feeling is like nothing else in the world.

Alex goes on, telling Maggie about graduate school, and about how she'd tried to deal with her problems through drinking and dancing and nameless men. And Maggie remembers all the disappointing sex, and the self-loathing and bitterness and feelings of failure that always Resonated, even after her very first time, and she just wants to cry. She remembers those couple of years when Alex was spiraling down, when Maggie rarely felt focus or happiness or success and mostly only felt stress and worry and those blurry waves of unsatisfying sex. Sex that never seemed to happen because Alex was feeling loved or turned on or happy, but rather because she was lonely or determined or anxious. And drunk. And, those years, the sex always ended with her sending guilt and disillusionment and disgust and disappointment and so much self-loathing that it still makes Maggie want to scream _you deserve better_.

Her poor girl. Lost and scared and possibly not even bisexual, trying to succeed just anywhere. She squeezes Alex's hand as tightly as she can.

She silently promises herself to give Alex better. To give her everything she's ever wanted, everything she's never had. To give her sex that will make her feel loved and worshiped and cared for and listened to and elated and full.

Alex tells Maggie about hitting rock bottom, and Maggie remembers that night – the night she'd been promoted. She tells Maggie about J'onn plucking her from the jail cell and recruiting her for the DEO, and Maggie tells her that she'd been sure Alex was a UFC fighter, and Alex laughs but gets this little glint in her eye, and Maggie makes a mental note to not let Alex become a UFC fighter.

Alex apologizes for all the injuries she's Resonated to Maggie, and she promises to make it up to her, and Maggie's been so busy thinking about being in love with Alex that she's barely thought about what sex with Alex would be like for _her_. But Alex's voice had just dropped a little and turned a little seductive, and Maggie doesn't know if it was on purpose or not, but suddenly her brain is full of images of just what exactly Alex could do to make it up to her, and she feels like she might combust.

Kissing Alex was nearly the death of her last night. She hasn't even really let herself imagine what more with Alex could be, the ways that sex with Alex would be more than just rewriting a story for Alex. She hasn't let herself imagine just how sex with her soulmate – with _Alex fucking Danvers_ – might feel.

It really, honestly might kill her, but what a way to go.

* * *

It's when Alex asks her about her childhood that Maggie really stutters.

She never tells anyone the truth, not like this. She'd told Emily, but not until they'd been together for more than a year. She's never told anyone since. It's private, and it's personal, and it still hurts so much, and it's such ammunition for someone to use against her. It's her greatest vulnerability, and people have been able to hurt her so much even without it.

She's never asked someone to love her and shown them all the other people who hadn't, all the scars they've left and all the reasons they've abandoned her.

No one's ever stayed, even without that ammunition.

But this is Alex. This is Alex and when she was fourteen Alex was the only person who felt what she felt, who understood, even as tinny echo, what happened to her.

This is Alex, and she's it for Maggie; she's the last person Maggie ever wants to kiss, the last person she ever wants to fall for.

So Maggie tells her.

She, haltingly, tells her about growing up in Blue Springs, and her brothers, and that her parents aren't soulmates, and about all the white kids and her principal, and about Cassie's mom.

She tells her about Eliza Wilke.

She tells her about realizing she had feelings for Eliza. She tells her about going to the store and spending an hour picking out a card and an envelope that weren't too sappy but felt right. She tells her about how she picked the little yellow envelope, no bigger than her own hand, because yellow was Eliza's real favorite color, even though she told everyone it was black, and because it made Maggie think of how the sunlight reflected off her blonde hair.

She tells her about leaving the note in Eliza's locker.

She tells her about coming home that night. She tells her about how the little yellow envelope had looked, crinkling and crumpling in her father's fist, dirt from the fields caking and streaking across the perfect pigment.

She tells her about her parents disowning her.

She tells her about her tía.

Alex, her voice shaking and her eyes furious, manages to reach out and cup Maggie's face with fingers that are both trembling with rage and so impossibly gentle. She tells Maggie, in no uncertain terms, that Maggie didn't deserve that. "You're perfect, Mags," she says, her hold steady and smooth on Maggie's jaw. "Just like this. You're perfect. You couldn't possibly be better."

Maggie can't help but cry, just a little.

But Alex isn't done. "You're the strongest person I've ever met," Alex says. "You're the most incredible, the most exquisite person I've ever met."

And Maggie has always wanted to be strong, has always wanted to be enough, has always wanted to be exceptional. And Alex is new and Alex doesn't know all of her yet, but Alex thinks that she is. Alex thinks that she's more than enough. Alex thinks that she's kind and generous and smart and worth loving.

Alex – still so softly and tenderly cupping her face – says just one more thing. That if she ever meets Maggie's parents she'll decapitate them with her bare hands.

And Maggie wants to huff out a laugh, but she's pretty sure Alex isn't exaggerating.

Maggie lets Alex kiss her forehead – a long, slow, tender kiss – before ducking her head down a little and Maggie just breathes, for a few moments, pressed up against Alex, not minding that all she's breathing in is Alex's expelled carbon dioxide.

She never knew it could feel like this. That she could tell someone and then feel _more_ safe with them, instead of afraid of them.

She never knew what it would feel like to entirely trust someone with that most tender and damaged part of herself and to have them treat it with love and care and a knowing gentleness. For someone to treat it –to treat _her_ – like she's precious.

Finally they pull apart, and Maggie wipes her eyes, and she keeps going, haltingly.

She tells Alex just a couple sentences about high school and life with her tía, and about college.

She tries to lighten the mood – because it's been heavy but she's lived a whole life since she was fourteen and that's worth talking about too – by apologizing for all the sex she'd Resonated over the years, and Alex blushes, and Maggie tries not to feel pressured to give future-Alex what might just be her first pleasurable sexual experience.

She tells her, just a little bit, about Emily.

Alex asks, her voice soft, if Maggie had cheated on her at the end.

Because, of course, Alex had been there with her.

Maggie hesitates. Her parents and Eliza are the most private thing in her life, but what she did to Emily is a close second. And she isn't the victim there, she's the monster.

Alex wants her, but she doesn't know.

Once she knows that Maggie's a cheater, that Maggie's a terrible person, will she walk away?

But Alex had felt it, and she'd been there with Maggie, and she directly asked, and Maggie isn't going to lie to her face about it, so there's no way to get around it.

She says yes. She tells Alex, just a little, about the problems they were having. About Emily's parents and about the apartment. She stutters a little, telling her about that night, about the aggressive grown-up version of Eliza Wilke. She tells her about what Emily had said to her, that night. That she was a monster, that she was unloveable. That she didn't deserve to be happy, and that she never would be. She tries to apologize, but she's too terrified to do a good job.

There's no way Alex stays after this.

But Alex Danvers is so much better than she's ever given her credit for.

Alex doesn't kick her out. She doesn't leave.

She just reaches out, with the hand that isn't still inside of Maggie's, and cups Maggie's cheek again, and looks at her with the softest eyes and the most open face and strokes her hair with the gentlest thumb.

She says that she understands. She says that Maggie isn't a bad person.

She says that Maggie doesn't have to be guarded with her, that she's not here to judge Maggie for what happened with Emily, or with anyone in her past.

She says that she's here to help Maggie heal.

That she's here now, to stand between Maggie and danger, between Maggie and heartbreak.

That Maggie's safe now, with her.

And Maggie has been holding herself up since she was fourteen. She's been independent and strong and fiercely guarded since she was fourteen. She hasn't leaned on anyone since she was fourteen.

But Alex's soft thumbs and gentle eyes and loving arms, and the way she'd whispered " ** _my_** Maggie" last night are changing her.

She'd been changed, completely and fundamentally, down to her bones, by Valentine's Day when she was fourteen. She wonders if she's going to be as deeply changed by today.

She thinks so.

She surprises herself by not minding the idea, not at all.


	11. New Normal

They keep talking. They talk about work and about their adult lives. Alex talks more about Kara – says that she doesn't have a soulmate because she was raised sort of Amish, and Maggie's brain keeps pinging.

But there's something else Maggie needs to ask about first. And it's been lighter and easier this last hour or so – especially since they took a break and watched an episode of SVU and mocked the police work. But Maggie knows there's one more big thing they have to talk about. She tries to keep the tone light, but she has to ask it.

"Alex," Maggie says softly, after clearing the balled up burrito wrappers from the coffeetable and coming back to sit on the couch, immediately taking Alex's hand back in hers. "Can we…I mean, do you mind if I ask you about the other week?"

Alex tilts her head a little bit, a move that – Maggie is pretty sure – she got from _her_. "What about it?"

Maggie can't help but fidget a little bit, because she still doesn't know if Alex is considering herself straight with one big exception or bi or gay or what, and she's honestly a little scared to bring it up in case it makes Alex change her mind.

But she has to know.

"About what changed," she says cautiously, "since then."

But apparently Alex isn't as good at detecting as Maggie is, because she isn't getting it. Alex (adorably) scrunches up her face as she thinks. But she's also kind of smiling as she gestures between the two of them. "Wellllll," she says, and Maggie can hear that she's holding back a laugh, "you're sitting here, on my couch, in my apartment, _holding my hand_ , and I'm pretty sure last night we figured out that we're soulmates, and last week I was sure I was destined to die alone, so…" She crinkles up her nose and grins and god, she's just so happy it makes Maggie's heart sing. "I think you're gonna have to be a little bit more specific."

And Maggie can't help but lean over and kiss her on the cheek. And she can't help it if she lingers a little longer than she should because god, Alex is a dork and god, Alex is incredible and god, Alex is hers.

Maggie squeezes Alex's hand a little, and then she forces herself to ask it more clearly. "The other week, at the bar? We were talking about soulmates and you said that you were looking for a man."

"Oh," is all Alex says, almost to herself.

"And I guess I'm just wondering about…like, what changed, or, I mean, if anything changed?"

"Oh," Alex says again, and she's still holding Maggie's hand but Maggie can't help but be scared.

"Because I mean, you said you were straight, and I don't want to ignore that, but last night I kissed you and it seemed like you maybe liked it, so I just—"

But Alex interrupts her with a surprised bark of laughter. " _Maybe_ I liked it? It _seemed_ like _maybe_ I liked it?" And then she actually out-loud snorts. "Jesus Christ, Mags, you call yourself a detective? Were you even paying attention?"

Maggie can't help but roll her eyes. "Okay, yes, I'm pretty sure that you liked it. Better?"

But Alex is leaning in and she's looking Maggie right in the eye, and her own eyes are still sparkling with humor but she seems to recognize that this is a serious question. "I loved it," she says firmly. "I loved it, and I'm really hoping that wasn't a one-time offer, because I'm really looking forward to doing it again. A lot. Like, kind of all the time."

And Maggie can't help but blush.

And she can't help but notice how gentle Alex is being with her – how effusive, how careful, how demonstrative, how clear.

No one has ever cared enough to treat her like this before. Like her worries matter and her insecurities are valid and that she's loved.

"But," Alex says, softening the word with a squeeze of her fingers, sending encouragement directly into Maggie's hand, "yeah, before that night, I was looking for man."

"What changed?" Maggie asks softly.

And Alex looks at her like she's the biggest idiot in the world.

Maggie backtracks quickly, stopping herself just in time from rolling her eyes. "No, I mean, I understand that last night changed things for you. For both of us. But, I guess I just mean, did anything happen between that conversation and last night?"

And Alex really looks at her, and then she sighs a little bit. "I'm going to answer your actual question," she says, and her tone is measured but also heavy with affection. "But before I do that, I want you to know that I'm not…how I felt before, it doesn't mean anything about _this_. About you, Mags. Even though I had meant what I said at the bar, I want this. I do. Okay?"

And she isn't making any big promises – she isn't saying _forever_ or _love_ or _lesbian_ – and honestly that makes Maggie believe her a little more. Alex is giving her exactly what she has, and she sees it and she appreciates it.

"But okay, yeah. So at the bar, that night, you asked me if I'd ever really thought, if I'd really questioned, if I was straight. And I was upset when you asked it, but I realized later I was only upset because I _hadn't_." Alex winces a little as she remembers. Maggie reminds herself to be gentle – this is all so _fresh_ for Alex.

"And, god, I'm a scientist, you know, it's my job to question and interrogate and test every hypothesis, and here this was, this huge thing, that I'd just accepted? Just assumed? It made me feel like an idiot."

And Maggie hears herself saying "You're not an idiot," before she even thinks it.

Alex smiles at her and squeezes again. "Well, I kind of was," she admits gently. "But, so, after I was done being upset, I started to wonder, and to really try to prove that hypothesis, that I was straight and I liked men."

And this time Maggie actively makes the choice to say it. "Nerd."

And Alex just levels a look at her, and Maggie's expecting an eyeroll or a _takes one to know one_ or maybe a _shut up Mags_ but what she gets instead just inflates the affection ballooning in her chest. "Oh, come on, Sawyer. Like there was even a _question_ about if I'd use the scientific method to figure out my sexuality." That pulls an unexpected burst of laughter out of Maggie.

Alex pauses for a moment and her adorable eyebrow crinkle makes another appearance. "You know me: if you can't shoot it, put it under a microscope." Maggie just laughs again. Because it's funny and it's true and it's wonderful.

"You should put that on a t-shirt," Maggie suggests. "Make it the official DEO slogan."

"I'll take it up with J'onn on Monday," Alex agrees with a solemn nod.

"So," Maggie prompts softly after a comfortable moment of silence. "What did the scientific method tell you?"

"I, um…" Alex tucks her hair back behind her ear with her free hand, and god, Maggie just wants to attach her mouth to Alex's collarbones and nestle her forehead into Alex's neck and never move again. "I realized that I just thought...I don't know. At first I thought that I could never make dating work because it wasn't with my soulmate. That it would get better when I met my soulmate, you know, that maybe the soulmate thing meant that I wasn't built for casual dating? But then I realized that a lot of people happily date other people – I mean, everyone around me has, you know. And so then I thought, you know, maybe I just…maybe I just didn't like intimacy. Maybe I just wasn't built that way at all, you know? Maybe my soulmate was platonic, or something?"

Every time she says soulmate she squeezes, her long fingers tightening on Maggie's, and every time it sends a thrill through Maggie. Good god, this woman is actually her soulmate. She's not sure if she'll ever get used to that thought.

"But I'd never…until you brought it up in the bar, I'd never thought that it could be this…other thing. That it wasn't that I didn't like intimacy or dating. That maybe it was…" Alex swallows hard, and Maggie wonders if this is the first time she's going to say it out loud. She makes sure that her face is loving and supportive and open and tender, and she gives a little squeeze of her own and flashes an encouraging dimple.

"That maybe it was because I didn't like men. That I don't like men." She manages to look Maggie right in the eyes. "That maybe I like girls – women – in that way."

She takes a second, and then she keeps going. "And so then I changed my hypothesis, you know, from _I like men_ to _I like women_ and I started sifting through the evidence and, I just…" She gives a little self-deprecating laugh, one laced with years of heaviness. "There was a lot more evidence than I'd thought there would be."

And Maggie decides to help her out a little. "Let me guess," she says gently. "All of the sudden, those couple teachers you loved, and your best friend in high school, and Ms. Honey and Princess Leia and the women from a League of Their Own took on a whole new light, right?"

And she can't help but laugh when Alex's jaw drops. "What—" she sputters. "How did?"

Maggie reaches up and cups Alex's face in her free hand – giving another long squeeze with the other – and presses a tender kiss to Alex's cheek again. "Oh, Ally," she says, swallowing down the phrase _oh, love_ which somehow nearly catapulted itself out of her throat. "That's basically the welcome-to-being-gay toolkit. Pretty teachers and pretty badass movie stars and high school friends are all basically a lesbian requirement."

And she's nervous about the word lesbian but Alex had said that she moved from a hypothesis about liking men to one about liking women, so maybe it's an okay word to use for now.

"And here I thought I was special," Alex murmurs, but Maggie hears the softness in it.

"So, what was her name? The girl who proved your hypothesis?"

Alex reaches out and pokes her in the dimple. "Margaret Sawyer," she says, and it's nearly a whisper.

Maggie can't help but grin, deepening her dimples. "Magdalena, actually," she teases.

But Alex pulls back quickly. "Wait, seriously?"

And when Maggie nods Alex dramatically throws herself back onto the couch cushions – careful to not let go of Maggie's hand. "Wow, one day in and I'm already a failure as a soulmate! I don't even know your _name_!"

But Maggie just laughs. "I like to cultivate an air of mystery."

"Obviously." Alex shakes her head a little. "Magdalena. Okay. Got it. Magdalena Sawyer. Check." She nods to herself like she's input this data into an encrypted file and Maggie bites back the word _love_ again.

"But no, I mean, what girl from your past? Which one tipped the scales?"

"Uh…" Alex fiddles a little bit with her watch, and Maggie just watches, her head tilted a little bit to the side. "Um, her name was Vicky. She was, um..." Alex lets out a breath. "High school."

Maggie nods, because, god, if anyone in the world understands the pain of that girl from high school, it's her.

"Did anything ever happen with her?" She asks as gently as she can.

Alex shakes her head. "Like, romantically? No. We never kissed, or anything. It wasn't…like your…I mean I didn't even _know_ , why I was…" She rolls her eyes a little bit at herself and Maggie's starting to realize it's what she does when she's trying to reel her emotions back in. "But we had this big falling out after she became a slut."

And it's a story Maggie's heard a million times – it's basically the lesbian canon – but she doesn't expect Alex to suck in a loud breath and shake her head.

"Sorry, no, that's…I shouldn't have said that. She didn't become a slut. She just…" And Alex makes a sound that Maggie's never heard from her before. Something sad and self-depreciating and laced with disappointment and a tinge of failure. "I guess she just actually _liked_ boys, is what it was." She pauses for a second before she says it. "She liked boys, and I…liked her."

"Her loss," Maggie says softly. "No way any boy is better than you."

And Alex rolls her eyes again but it's less heavy. "Right back atcha, Magdalena," she manages, and Maggie decides that holding hands is lovely but she'd rather be holding Alex.

So she shifts on the couch and gently tugs on Alex's hand until she gets the idea, and then Alex is curling up into her, tilting down and resting her head on Maggie's shoulder, her forehead pressed into Maggie's neck. And Maggie's arm is around her shoulders and her other hand is still softly clutching Alex's.

Maggie drops a kiss onto Alex's head.

And then Alex makes the cutest little sound – like she wants Maggie to do it again – so she does.

"How are you doing, with it all?" Maggie asks softly. "It must be a lot."

Alex somehow presses even closer to her. "Yeah, it's a lot. But, I don't know. It's good, too. I feel like I finally get myself, you know?"

And Maggie doesn't really know – not really – but she remembers the movie and the memoirs and that night she'd spent crying in the dark cornfields on her way home Eliza's house, and she tightens her arm and squeezes her hand.

Alex keeps going. "And I've realized…I mean, it would be easy to think it's just about you, you know? Just feelings for _you_ , that you're just an exception, because of…everything. And, I mean…how could I not like you? You're…" she gestures up and down Maggie's body with an air of futility, "you know?"

And Maggie's never known herself to be irresistible, so no, she doesn't know, but she just nods and lets Alex keep going.

But Alex keeps going. "But it isn't – I mean, _of course_ it's about you, because everything has always been about you – but it's also…it's about me. It's about who I am. And I'm happy, that this is me. That this is how I am. Even beyond being happy about you, I think I'm…I think I'm happy about me, to be like this."

And Maggie can't do anything but smile softly and press Alex even closer into her body. She's so incredible. To have this dropped on her lap at nearly thirty and to have come this far, this quickly? To be happy with who she is, just like that?

To be curled up against her, squeezing her hand and telling her, in no uncertain terms, that she wants to be together?

After the memoirs Maggie had hoped, but she'd never imagined that Alex would be this strong, this fast. This steady.

She truly, absolutely, does not deserve this perfect girl. But, god, she wants to spend every day of her life making that up to her.

"You know I'm here for you, right? I want you to – I mean, if you want – you can talk to me about it. I won't be upset, if you're freaked or anything. I know it's a lot." And she's not entirely sure that's a promise she can keep, but, good lord, there's nothing she wouldn't do for this girl.

"Thank you," Alex says softly. "Really. I'm sure I'll freak out more, eventually. I'll probably need an alien hallucinogenic cocktail to tell my mom," Maggie laughs and Alex squeezes, "but, I don't know. So far it's been…pretty okay. I mean, I was terrified when I was telling Kara last week but—"

"Wait, you already told Kara? Before last night?"

She can feel Alex nod against her neck. And Maggie has never been so physically comfortable but she shifts anyway, pulling away just enough to be able to turn and look at Alex. Alex's head comes up, and now Maggie's arm is around her back, and god, they're so close together.

"God," Maggie breathes, distracted by how beautiful Alex is. "You're so fucking brave, Alex."

And they're already in something a lot like an embrace, but she pulls Alex flush against her in possibly the closest and more intimate hug in the universe. "God, Ally. I'm so proud of you."

And Alex just sinks into her.

"What did she say? Was she okay with it?"

Alex nods against her neck again. "She was great," she mumbles into Maggie's skin.

And Maggie stomps down on the jealousy that flares up inside of her – that always flares up when someone has a good coming out. "I'm so happy for you," she says by rote.

But then realizes. She _is_ actually happy for her. She's jealous, yeah, of course, but she's also just purely happy for her. Because Alex deserves all the good in the world.

So she pulls back just enough, and obviously Alex is feeling the same thing she is, because Alex tugs her in and kisses her.

And it's just like the kiss last night. It's deep and warm and heavy and bright and shimmering and Maggie never wants to feel anything else, ever, in her entire life.

And Alex is incredibly brave and impossibly strong and came out to her sister because of the scientific method and Maggie lets herself linger in the kiss. She lets herself get lost in tracing Alex's cheekbones with her fingers and Alex's lips with her tongue and just letting Alex's smell and her soft skin and the firm desperate grip of her hands on Maggie's body fill her up inside. Alex's lips are open and full and thick and Maggie slides and sucks her way across them and she never wants to stop.

"God," Alex whispers against her lips after an unknown amount of time. "I've been wanting to do that."

And they've been holding hands for hours now – sharing the deepest parts of themselves – and they'd kissed like that last night (or was it technically this morning?) but none of that matters.

Because Maggie's been wanting to do that too.

Her whole life, Maggie's been wanting to do that.

* * *

Even though she's incredibly happy to be with Alex, and in a lot of ways it's the best afternoon of her life, it's also one of the hardest.

She's trying so hard to be open, to be present, to be a good partner. To share, to be honest, to tell Alex the deepest and scariest things inside of herself. But it feels like she's extracting each of them with a rusty set of pliers, just prying them out of the hiding places they've been in for so long, and her body is aching with stale adrenalin and leftover fear by the time they're done.

But it isn't until she's standing by the door, getting ready to leave, that she's able to articulate why she's still so scared.

Because Alex is just beaming, just pure happiness, and that's amazing. Maggie still can't believe that being with _her_ makes Alex so happy, but it really seems to.

But Maggie is still so scared of this, of Alex, of how easily Alex could crush her. Alex, with the loving family. Alex, best friend of Supergirl. Alex, with the space dad and the co-workers and the friends who all rallied and gathered just to meet her new friend.

Alex, with so many people in her life.

Alex, with the support system.

Alex, who is just coming out and is about to realize how shiny and beautiful girls are.

Alex could destroy her in a heartbeat.

But she doesn't want Alex to think she doesn't want her. She doesn't want Alex to think that she isn't in this, that she isn't happy that it's Alex.

So, for the last time today, she takes hold of the pliers and pulls out one more deep, dark, rotten truth. "I'm scared of this," she says, toying with her sleeves, shifting her weight from one foot to the other in front of the door. "Because no one's ever loved me as much as I loved them."

She expects Alex to recoil a little, or just say _okay_ or maybe say _I'm sure that's not true_ in a frustratingly placating voice.

She's not expecting Alex to just nod like she understands.

But Alex just simply nods, and she says, "Me neither." And that doesn't possibly seem true, but Maggie doesn't say it.

"But Maggie," Alex reaches over and lifts Maggie's chin with one gentle finger. "You don't have to be guarded with me," she says. "I'm _here_. I'm here to help you heal, I'm here to put you first. I'm just…" She swallows and makes a choked little laughing sound, and Maggie can't stop looking at her. "I know—I know I'm new to relationships, and to women, but…Maggie, I…" Alex seems to be taking a deep breath and gathering herself to say something big. "I just…I don't think you need to worry about that, with me, Mags."

And Maggie hears what she didn't say, and she tries to force herself to believe it.

Alex wants her, maybe even almost as much as she wants Alex.

Maggie can't help but smile as she steps forward, pulling Alex into herself for another long moment.


	12. El Mayarah

**A/N: Hello beautiful friends!**

 **First of all, I'm so sorry, but the chapter before this one didn't post properly back when I wrote it! I've posted two chapters today. Please make sure to read Chapter 11: New Normal before you read this one, if you haven't yet.**

 **And secondly, this chapter is the last one of this work. I want to thank you all so much, each one of you, for reading Revelations, for demanding this fic, and for leaving me your thoughts and feelings and supportive messages as I've worked my way through it. I'm so glad to have (been forced to have) written it, and I'm even more glad to have had you all on this journey with me. This world means so much to me, I have absolutely loved writing in it, and you're all wonderful human beings for hanging with me.**

 **This world, and these beautiful soulmates, are continuing in the one-shot series Reverberations, which will have it's first chapter posted within the week. It'll be marked as a work in this same series. Please feel free to continue sending prompts you'd like to see over on my tumblr (same username) or here in the comments.**

 **Love love love you, and enjoy.**

* * *

Maggie's at home, reading on her couch. She's been completely caught up in this novel, and she's meant to spend the day grocery shopping and cooking and doing her laundry, but instead she's going on hour six with her nose buried in this book. _Sabriel_ , it's called, and it's about a girl who can raise and put down the Dead.

Alex recommended it, of course, and Maggie had scoffed at it, but she literally hasn't been able to put it down since she'd absently started it this morning during breakfast.

Sabriel is looking for her missing father, and she wears a bandolier of magical bells across her chest and a sword strapped to her back and she's badass because she has to be. Because there's no one else who can do what she can do.

Maggie gets why Alex liked it.

Plus, the girl has pale skin, and dark hair, and knows terrible secrets and is burdened with a horrible responsibility that she inherited from her father and learned from her books, and if that doesn't scream _Alex Danvers_ , then nothing does.

So when there's a knock on her door, Maggie nearly screams.

Sabriel and Maggie are in a serious situation, a scary one, in the dark with water dripping around them, and the cold is closing in on them, and Maggie is right there with her in the terrifying currents of the river of death, and then someone knocks on her door and she positively squeaks out loud.

There's a muffled sound of laughter from the other side of the door, and Maggie considers not opening it. Just continuing to hide, here on her couch, in her socks and sweats and blankets, forging through death without even the comfort of bells or book or sword.

But the person heard her squeak (and laughed at her) and Maggie's never one for leaving a mystery unsolved. So she puts the book down on the coffee table, letting her fingers drag reluctantly over the pages, and walks to her front door.

She opens it and blinks a few times, trying to push through surprise to find something else. Because it's _Kara_ , standing there. She's met Kara just twice – once with the superfriends the night she and Alex got together, and once about two weeks ago when Kara and Alex had read her their letters. And that's it.

And Maggie likes her – hell, she's pretty sure she pledged her undying fealty to her in the booth at Noonan's – but nothing in their previous interactions has prepared her for Kara like this, showing up at her door without a warning. Without Alex.

"Hey, Maggie!" Kara chirps, and a lot of Maggie is still in the icy waters of death with Sabriel and the rest of her is very confused, but the small part of her that's here and able to think marvels at how cheerful Kara can make the most mundane of interactions. "Sorry to drop by unannounced!"

"Oh, uh, no. It's no problem," Maggie manages to say, trying to balance being polite to the sister of her soulmate with her nervousness at being alone with Kara for the first time with the fact that she can literally feel the book pulsing and demanding that she finish it immediately.

Politeness wins. She steps back, gesturing for Kara to cross the threshold. "Come in, please."

Kara nods and steps smartly into the apartment, and Maggie wonders, for one wild second if Kara is a vampire. There's _something_ weird about her – about the way Alex talks about her, and the way she walks and acts and looks around the world – and Maggie is _pretty_ sure vampires aren't real, but you never know. And Maggie just invited Kara into her home which is Don't Do #1 for vampires.

But Kara doesn't attack her. She just turns to face Maggie, her burgundy pants and blue shirt standing out in the muted colors of the apartment. "Alex left her glasses here, and I was in the neighborhood and I'm seeing her tonight, so she asked if I could grab them for her."

And Maggie knows where Kara's apartment is, because she picked Alex up from there once, and she knows where CatCo is, and neither is near here. She lets that percolate in the back of her mind as she offers Kara a drink, partly hoping she'll say yes and partly hoping she'll say no and leave Maggie to her battle with the Dead.

She says yes, gushing excitedly about the mundane lemonade Maggie is offering her like it's a drink from the fountain of youth.

This kid. She's really something.

Maggie heads to the kitchen to pour two lemonades, and when she comes out she hastily pulls the blanket off the couch, tossing it to the armchair, and inviting Kara to sit with her.

"Oh!" Kara exclaims, looking down at the coffee table. " _Sabriel_! Alex used to love this book! She read it out loud to me once."

Well, that's adorable.

"Yeah, she loaned it to me. Apparently she isn't willing to be the soulmate of anyone who hasn't read it." Maggie rolls her eyes, trying to keep her tone flat, but she's grinning too much.

Alex is her _soulmate_ , and she's such a nerd, and Maggie would read every book in the world if it meant making Alex as happy as she was three days ago, when she'd pressed this worn paperback into Maggie's hands like it was a holy relic.

Especially if all of her books are this good.

Kara laughs, loud and pure. "Well, I hope you're liking it," she warns. "The sequels are like, a million pages each."

And Maggie thinks about how it feels to press Alex up against her door, kissing her senseless at the end of their dates. And how Alex looks when she's excited about something, eyes bright and twinkling, hands gesturing like crazy. And how sometimes Alex cuts herself off, like she's used to people not listening to her when she talks for too long about something she cares out, science or books or flash grenades or whatever.

"I think I can take it," she says, trying not to beam too hard. "But I definitely appreciate the heads up."

Kara reaches out to pick up the paperback, but her hand stills, hovering over the coffee table.

"Oh," Maggie says softly, blinking quickly. She'd been so distracted by her journey with Sabriel, by the weight of the bandolier of bells across her chest, by the way the icy river of death was licking at her ankles, that she'd forgotten about what else was out on her coffee table.

About what else she's taken to carrying around with her, to work and to bars and even on one of her dates with Alex.

"Is that…" Kara hesitates for a moment, clearly unsure of the protocol.

"Your letter," Maggie finishes softly. "Well, a photocopy of it, yeah."

The letter that Kara wrote almost fifteen years ago. The letter that says _you don't have to be alone or scared or sad_. The letter that says _I'm really excited to meet you. I'm sorry your family is poopy. There's nothing wrong with being different._

The letter that says _I'm gonna love you_.

The letter that's signed _Kara Danvers, Your New Little Sister._

Kara reaches halfway for it, then pulls her hand back. "Can I?"

Maggie just nods.

Kara picks it up, then, and holds it for a long moment. Her eyes run over it, taking in how, in the scant two weeks since she'd given it to Maggie, this photocopy has already become soft and creased and worn with frequent handling. The way her childish handwriting stands out against the pale paper.

The way that Maggie had carefully placed a photo on the bottom of the original when she'd put it facedown on the copier glass, so that it was copied onto the same page as the letter.

It's the picture of the three of them that Kara had taken that night, at Noonan's. She'd piled into the same side of the booth as Maggie and Alex, insisting on taking a selfie with "my two big sisters."

Kara gently traces her fingers over the photo. Over herself and Alex beaming at the camera, Alex's arms both wrapped firmly around Maggie. Over Maggie sitting between them, looking – happy and overwhelmed and completely disbelieving – over at Kara, one of her hands gripping Kara's bicep right at the bottom of the frame.

Kara looks over at the real Maggie, and Maggie can see her thinking through the fact that she printed out that picture before putting it on the letter. The fact that the letter has a small mustard stain on the back of it, that Maggie's been using it as a bookmark in this favorite precious paperback of Alex's.

The fact that Alex's letter is nowhere in sight.

"You know, if you need a good bookmark," Kara starts, awkwardly, clearly not sure what to say.

Maggie takes a deep breath, gathering all of the courage she's ever had, and all of the courage she can borrow from Sabriel, and catapults herself over one of her steepest and craggiest emotional barriers.

"I had two brothers, when I was growing up," she starts, her voice soft and just a little bit scared. "Tomàs was oldest, six years older than me. We were never close. But Tonio – _Antonio_ – he was only two years older than me. We used to share a room, when we were little. We'd stay up late, telling each other stories about monsters and dragons, and listening to baseball games on his shitty little toy radio. We were…um…" Maggie clears her throat, taking a breath. "We were really close."

Kara just nods softly, pushing her glasses up her nose. She's still holding the photocopied letter. Maggie knows she's too smart to have missed the past tense. We _were_ really close.

"After I left my parents' house…after I was kicked out…Tonio tried. But he…" she presses her hands together, clenching them until her knuckles are white.

And Maggie hates to be touched by anyone she isn't dating, especially when she's being vulnerable, but when Kara reaches over and eels her fingers between Maggie's, it's the most natural thing in the word.

"He wasn't as awful as everyone else, but I still think he didn't get it. He tried, but it just wasn't…it wasn't nearly what it had been. Especially not after I left for college. We only talk maybe once or twice a year now."

Maggie squeezes Kara's fingers, which is surprisingly painful. "I haven't felt like I've have a sibling for more than half my life."

Kara nods, like she gets it. Maggie flicks her eyes down to the letter, still held gently in Kara's hand. The letter that says _people think bad things about me too, big brother, but they just don't understand who I really am, or what I've been through, or what it's like to be me. I bet it's the same for you._

"I'm so, so immensely grateful for Alex. For having her in my life. I've wanted to meet my soulmate for so long, you know, and I've always imagined and wondered what a life with her would be like. And Alex," Maggie shakes her head and she can't help but laugh a little bit at how true her next thought is. "Alex is beyond my wildest dreams. But I never…I never really thought about the fact that my soulmate might come with a family."

Kara cocks her head a little bit, clearly confused.

Maggie tries again. "I think, in some tiny way, I was a little bit prepared for Alex, because I've spent so long desperately hoping for her. But I didn't even know to be hoping for you."

Kara's eyes fly open wide. "For me?"

"I never even imagined a world in which I could have a sibling again. The other day, at Noonan's, you called me a big sister, and I know that was a holdover from when you were a kid and stuff," but Kara is giving her this tender look, like maybe it wasn't. "But I just…I don't know. I'm kind of…I think I might be a little more knocked on my ass by how that feels, than by anything else."

And Kara's nodding again, and she's gently rubbing Maggie's fingers with hers. "I didn't have any siblings, back before my family died," she says softly. "It was just me and my parents. And then, right before it happened, I had a baby cousin. And I loved him, and played with him, but I was eleven when he was born, so it was different."

It's Maggie's turn to nod, even though she doesn't know where this is going at all.

"After my parents died, I was brought to the Danvers family, to live with them. And I knew that there was a mom and dad, and they were super clear with me that they weren't trying to replace my parents, that I didn't have to call them 'mom' or 'dad,' you know, but I knew what their role was supposed to be. I guess I understood who they were supposed to be for me. And I never imagined I would be happy with them, or feel at home in their house, but I did, eventually."

She takes a sip of lemonade and then bites her lip a little bit before she continues, and Maggie can tell that she's picking her words very carefully. "So, in a way, I was prepared for them. But Alex…I had no idea what having a sister was supposed to be like. I was totally unprepared for her. She was so… _Alex_ , you know?" And they both laugh, because they both know.

Maggie thinks about the letter, about what she knows about how Alex had treated her new traumatized little sister. _She's so good to me and so wonderful and smart and thoughtful and generous. Alex didn't have to but she_ _LOVES ME._ _She knows what everyone says about me, all the reasons she shouldn't love me, but she does_ _anyway._

Alex is just so…Alex.

"And I think, maybe, I was more knocked on my butt by having Alex as a sister than by having new parents."

And Maggie grins at her – not just because she changed the word _ass_ to the word _butt_ – but because she gets it.

She inclines her head towards the paper Kara's still holding. "You don't think I'm a creep, for carrying this around?"

And Kara just smiles at her, and it's soft and indulgent and kind and loving and supportive. "No," she says gently. "Not at all."

And Maggie has never imagined, not once, that she'd get a new family, but now she's sitting on her couch, in her socks and her sweats, with a nerdy young adult novel burning a hole in her coffee table, drinking lemonade with her little sister.

"Just," Kara adds, wrinkling her nose a little bit, "Don't start carrying it around in your underwear or anything."

And Maggie whacks her with a pillow because she's pretty sure that's what big sisters do.

And Sabriel is brave, stalking the Dead through the icy river of death and the darkness of life. But Maggie thinks that this, opening herself up not only to Alex but to Kara, not only to the love of her soulmate but the love of a new family, not only to the possible devastation of losing the love of her life but of losing another family, another sibling, might be just as brave.

Because Sabriel _has_ to do it. And Maggie doesn't have to.

But she's doing it anyway.

* * *

The next week, Kara calls to invite Maggie over to make dinner with her and Alex. "Honestly," she says, her excitement and cheer nearly bursting through the phone, "we're hoping you can cook. We're both somewhere on the hopeless side of the spectrum."

And Maggie says yes, and she goes.

And Alex kisses her hello when she opens the door, running her fingers through Maggie's hair and trailing them up and down her back as they drink beers around the kitchen island.

And Alex is ridiculously beautiful, and she waxes eloquent about _Sabriel_ for the better part of twenty minutes, asking Maggie all kinds of questions about her thoughts and opinions and guesses.

She's so excited, and so happy, and so in love, and she presses both sequels into Maggie's hands, and Maggie can't help but turn to look at Kara in disbelief, who is doing her best not to laugh at the look on Maggie's face.

Both books are _enormous_.

Maggie rises to her tiptoes to give Alex the most thorough kiss she can.

She is just so stupid in love with her.

And they make dinner, and they drink beer, and after they eat Kara fiddles with her phone before the sounds of a baseball game pipe through her speakers.

"National City is playing tonight," is all she says, but Maggie hears everything she doesn't say.

That maybe tonight they'll stay up late listening to the radio announcers talk them through the balls and strikes and home runs of this game, and maybe next time they'll trade stories of dragons and monsters and families that are long gone.

And during it all, Maggie will lean back into Alex's arms, and will feel safer, and more loved, and more at home than anytime since she'd been warm and comfy in her little twin bed in her little childhood room, with the loud breaths of her sleeping brother just in arms reach, pulling the sheets over her head and clicking on her flashlight to admire the sharks and snakes inked on her arms.


End file.
